FRENCH    PROPHETS   OF   YESTERDAY 


FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF 
YESTERDAY 

A   STUDY   OF   RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT 
UNDER    THE    SECOND    EMPIRE 


BY 


ALBERT    LEON    QUERARD 

AGREGE  DE  L'UNIVERSITfi,  ASSISTANT   PROFESSOR 

OF    FRENCH    IN    THE    LELAND    STANFORD    JUNIOR 

UNIVERSITY,  CALIFORNIA 


NEW    YORK 

D.    APPLETON    AND    COMPANY 
MCMXIII 


First  Published     .     igi^ 


[All  rights  reserved.'] 


Cr^ 


V 


CARISSIM^   CONJUGI 

Ex  animo  factus  meo,  tibi  sit  hie  liber. 

A.  L.  G. 


263593 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Introduction — Scope  and  Method  of  this  Book  .      9 


BOOK  I 

CHAPTEB 

I.     Catholicism       .            .  .            .            .            .25 

II.     Protestantism  .            .  .            .            .            .70 


BOOK    II 

I.     Voltairianism    ......  101 

II.     Eomantic  Humanitarianism     ....  118 

BOOK    III 

I.     The  New  Spirit — Background  and  Influences      .  159 
II.     The  Poets  of  Science  and  Despair.  .  .  180 

III.  Critics  and  Historians  :  Sainte-Beuve,  Taine        .  201 

IV.  Ernest  Eenan  ......  224 

Conclusion         ......  256 

Bibliographical  Note.  ....  282 

Index      .......  285 


ANALYTICAL   TABLE  OF   CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION:    SCOPE   AND   METHOD   OF   THIS   BOOK 

PAOB 

1.  Is  France  lost  to  Christianity? 9- 

Anti-clericalism — Anti-catholicism — Anti-christianity  and  Irre- 
ligion — A  spiritual,  not  a  moral  issue. 

2.  Importance  of  the  Question 13 

France  still  one  of  the  world's  great  powers — Her  spiritual  in- 
fluence— Wider  significance  of  the  problem. 

3.  Historical  Treatment  Necessary 15 

Why  the  period  of  the  Second  Empire  was  selected. 

4.  Division  :  Theology,  Metaphysics,  Positivism       ....      17 

Comte's  Law  of  the  Three  States  —  Theology — Metaphysics — 
Positivism. 

BOOK     I 

CHAPTER  I— CATHOLICISM 

1.  Character  and  Evolution  op  Catholicism  from  1848  to  1870    .      25 

Is  there  an  unknown  Catholic  literature? — Number  and  influence 
of  the  Catholics — The  Church  identified  with  reaction :  (a) 
Roman  Affairs ;  (b)  Anti-socialistic  reaction  —  Growth  of 
Ultramontanism — War  on  modern  civilisation. 

2.  Estheticism  in  Religion  :  The  Satanic  School    ....       33 

Romanticism  in  Religion  :  from  Orthodoxy  to  Diabolism — In- 
gredients of  Diabolism  :  (a)  sin  ;  (6)  mystery  ;  (c)  sensuality  ;  (d) 
pathology — Baudelaire  :  Degree  of  sincerity — Adhesion  to  Catholi- 
cism —  Enjoyment  of  systematic  depravity  —  Flashes  of 
aspiration  and  remorse — Barbey  d'Aurevilly :  Apostle  of  Dandy- 
ism—  Devil-worshipper — Realistic  novelist  —  Influence  of  the 
Diabolists. 

3.  The  Gospel  of  Authority:  Barbey  d'Aurevilly  and  Veuillot      43 

Influence  of  -Joseph  de  Maistre — Louis  Veuillot :  atmosphere  of 
violence — Intolerance — Fondness  for  paradox — A  man  of  the 
people — A  journalist — A  moralist  :  Tlie  Odours  of  Paris — Kind 
and  loving  at  heart — Comparison  with  Proudhon. 

4.  The  Liberal  Catholics 49 

Liberal  Catholicism  before  1843 — The  Liberal  Catholic  group  under 
the  Second  Republic — Under  the  Empire — Political  insignificance 
— Social  prominence — Difficulty  of  their  religious  position : 
Montalembert  and  the  Congress  of  Malines — Mgr.  Dupanloup  and 
the  Syllabus — The  Council  of  the  Vatican. 

5.  Philosophers  :  Mob.  Maret  and  Father  Grattv         ...      56 

Mgr.  Maret :  a  conservative  reformer — The  evolution  of  dogma — 
Constitutional  reform  his  goal — Father  Gratry  :  wide  interests — 
Inductive  rationalism — Eclectic  philosophy — Warm-heartedness. 

6.  Ernest  Hello 63 

The  Illustrious  Unknovm — Morbidity  and  genius — A  Celt  and  a 
mystic — Unevenness — Romanticism — Small  influence. 

7.  CONCLUSTOX   . 68 

No  alternative  but  theocracy  and  free-thought. 

CHAPTER  II— PROTESTANTISM 

1.  The  Struggle  between  Orthodoxy  and  Liberalism     .        .  70 

The    French    Protestants    are    not   foreign,    but    different — The 


ANALYTICAL  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

conflict  of  principles  within  Protestantism :  the  case  for  Liberal- 
ism ;  for  Orthodoxy — The  conflict  in  France  from  1848  to  1872 — 
The  Eevival  and  the  Free  Evangelical  Churches — The  Revue  de 
Strasbourg — Athanase  Coquerel,  junior,  and  Guizot — The  Declar- 
ation of  Faith  of  1872. 

»  2.  Guizot 78 

Many-sidedness — Activity  in  retirement — Early  influences  and 
return  to  faith — The  Meditations — Philosophical  foundations  of 
belief — Historical  foundations — The  champion  of  conservation 
and  authority. 

3.  SCHEEER 83 

Early  influences — The  Oratoire  :  period  of  strict  orthodoxy — The 
Revue  de  Strasbourg :  liberalism — Ends  in  universal  relativism — 
Sadness — Stoic  resignation — Peace. 

4.  QuiNET 92 

Thoughts  of  transitional  reform — Quinet  before  1848 — After  1852 : 
return  to  the  religion  of  conscience — The  religious  policy  of  the 
French  Revolution :  advocacy  of  persecution — Interest  in  Uni- 
tarianism — Remains  a  free-thinker — Creatio^i — No  clear  message, 
but  an  example. 

5.  Conclusion 100 

Requiescat  in  pace. 

BOOK   II 

CHAPTER  I— VOLTAIRIANISM 

1.  Decline  and  Revival  of  Voltairianism 101 

Two  kinds  of  Voltairianism:  positive  and  negative— Scoffing 
scepticism  the  result  of  hypertrophied  common  sense — Decline 
of  Voltairianism  about  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century — 
Survivors  and  fossils :  B^ranger,  Viennet,  Doudan,  Cousin — 
Revival  of  Voltairianism  as  a  result  of  the  Catholic  reaction — 
Romances  and  histories — The  stage — The  political  world  :  Prince 
Napoleon  and  Sainte-Beuve  in  the  Senate — The  Good  Friday 
orgy. 

2.  Spiritual  Nihilism  :  Merimee 109 

Education — Diflicult  position  in  politics — At  Court  and  in  Society 
— Merimee  as  an  earnest  doubter — His  Protestant  funeral — 
Smiling  despair — Barrenness  of  Voltairianism. 

CHAPTER  II— ROMANTIC  HUMANITARIANISM 

1.  Formation  op  Romantic  Humanitarianism  (before  1848)      .        .     118 

Romanticism,  exhausted  as  a  literary  movement,  assumes  a 
political  and  social  form — What  is  Romanticism  ? — Conflicting 
definitions — Hypertrophy  of  the  Ego — Apparent  contradiction 
between  the  ideals  of  Romanticism  in  1820  and  in  1848— From 
reaction  and  individualism  to  democracy  and  Humanitarianism 
— Belief  in  the  poet's  mission — Disappointment  with  the  Restora- 
tion— Three  avenues  of  change  :  the  national  sentiment ;  the 
rise  of  the  social  problem ;  the  free  Christianity  of  Lamennais — 
The  Romantic  faith  :  France  as  a  Messianic  nation — Mankind 
as  the  incarnation  of  the  Divine — Nature- worship  and  Pantheism 
a  minor  element — Sincerity  and  potency  of  that  faith. 

2.  Michelet 129 

Triumph  of  Romantic  Humanitarianism  in  February,  1848,  and 
downfall  in  June — The  Romantic  leaders  in  defeat,  poverty,  and 
exile :  Lamennais,  Lamartine,  George  Sand,  Quinet,  Leroux, 
Reynaud,  Enfantin,  Barrault,  Pelletan,  Michelet  and  Quinet — 
Michelet :  all  life  and  love — Sincerity — Energy — Justice — The 
foundation:   the  Hearth  (home),  the  city,  the  fatherland — The 


ANALYTICAL  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


PAGE 


sister    nations — The    Revolution — Nature— God — The    Church 
hostility  to  Catholicism — La  Bible  de   V HumaniU—MicheleVs 
influence. 

3.  Victor  Hugo .     141 

Primacy — Difficulties :  political  prejudices  not  yet  silenced — 
Heterogeneous  complexity  of  his  thought — To  what  extent  he 
was  a  time-server — The  High  Priest  of  Romantic  Democracy — 
Faithful  to  spiritualistic  Theism — A  second  aspect :  the  "  weird 
Titan  " — The  Dreamer — Manicheism — Conflicting  conceptions  of 
human  destiny :  fatalistic  optimism,  fatalistic  pessimism — Pan- 
theistic naturalism — Conscience,  liberty,  and  responsibility — 
Conflicting  sanctions :  conscience — Optional  immortality — Astral 
transmigration — Universal  metempsychosis — The  poem  God — 
Spiritual  greatness  of  Victor  Hugo :  conscience,  love,  and  the 
shudder  of  the  infinite. 

BOOK   III 

CHAPTER  I— THE   NEW   SPIRIT:   BACKGROUND  AND 

INFLUENCES 

1,  Characteristics 159 

Triumph  of  the  scientific  spirit — Attending  gloom — Relativity 
and  evolution — The  experimental  method — How  science  affected 
literature  and  religion. 

2.  Saint-Simon,  Comte,  Littee 166 

Saint-Simon  :  a  '•  New  Christianity,"  mankind  the  object,  in- 
dustry the  method  of  service — Auguste  Comte :  the  Law  of  the 
Three  States — The  classification  of  sciences — The  religion  of 
Humanity — Littre:  scientific  atheism. 

5.  P.-J.  Proudhon 172 

Transition  from  Romantic  to  Scientific  Socialism — Antitheism : 
its  elements — The  God  he  attacks  is  the  Absolute — De  la  Justice 
dans  la  Revolution  et  dans  VEglise — Three  fundamental  ideas: 
relativism,  justice,  humanity. 

CHAPTER  II— THE   POETS   OF   SCIENCE   AND 
DESPAIR 

Science  and  Poetry 180 

1.  Alfred  de  Vigny  :  his  consistency — His  life  no  clue  to  his  thought 

— Attitude  towards  organised  Christianity  —  The  religion  of 
thought — Pessimism  :  the  curse  of  genius — Nature  indifferent 
— God  responsible :  antitheism — The  Ethics  of  Despair  :  stoic 
pride,  honour,  pity,  service — The  Dawn :  Thought  conquers 
Pessimism — The  "school"  of  Vigny? — Leconte  de  Lisle,  Mme.. 
Ackermann,  Sully-Prudhomme,  Jean  Lahor. 

2.  Leconte  de  Lisle 191 

The  faultless  craftsman — Art  for  Art's  sake — Impassibility — A  few 
personal  notes — Radical  pessimism — Antitheism — Qain  :  the 
rebellion  of  Justice  —  Misanthropy — Spiritual  nihilism  —  One- 
sidedness. 

CHAPTER   III— CRITICS   AND  HISTORIANS: 
SAINTE-BEUVE,  TAINE 

1.  Sainte-Beuve 201 

Politico-religious  attitude :  a  supporter  of  the  Empire — Re- 
spectful of  the  Church  until  1859— Growing  hostility,  1859-G5 
— Open  leadership  of  anti-clerical  Free-thought  after  1865 — Inner 
evolution  :  Port  Royal. — Montaigne  and  Pascal — Scepticism  and 
faith — Dissatisfied  with  Supernaturalism  and  Naturalism — Make- 


ANALYTICAL  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


PAGE 


shifts  :  lareligicni  des  honnetes  gens — Scepticism — Curiosity — Love 
of  truth — Final  term  :   scientific  stoicism — Amiel's  tribute. 

.  Taine 212 

A  master — Attacks  Eclecticism,  and  Romantic  sentimentalism 
in  philosophy — Science  for  Science's  sake — Monistic  determinism 
— Influence  of  the  eighteenth  century :  classical  rationalism  of 
Taine — The  Eternal  Axiom  his  God — Esthetic  and  social  appre- 
ciation for  historical  religions,  but  no  faith — Patches  of  pantheism 
in  his  writings — A  sensitive  and  passionate  soul — Pessimism,  the 
second  Mai  du  Siecle — Stoicism — Lack  of  tenderness — Dangers  of 
his  influence. 

CHAPTER  TV— ERNEST   RENAN 

1.  Influences,  1823-48 224 

Brittany  —  Catholicism  —  The  priests — Saint-Nicolas  and  Abb6 
Dupanloup — Saint-Sulpice —  Issy  —  Rationalism — Philology  and 
Germany — Crisis — Berthelot. 

2.  Renan's  Life  and  Works  from  1848  to  1870         ....     232 

1848 — The  Future  of  Science — Mission  to  Italy — The  Coup  d'Etat 
— Mission  to  Phoenicia — Professor  in  the  College  de  France — Vie 
de  Jesus — Success  —  Contemporary  opinions  :  Free-thinkers, 
Catholics — Four  conceptions  of  a  Life  of  Jesus — Renan's  a 
historical  romance — Lack  of  inner  unity — TJie  Sciences  of  Nature 
and  the  Historical  Sciences — The  Apostles — Saint  Paul — Questions 
of  the  Times — Political  velleities — Declaration  of  war. 

3.  Renan's  Religious  Philosophy,  1848-70 243 

A  servant  of  the  ideal — Later  "  Renanism  " — Influence  of  the 
events  of  1870-71 — Sceptical  only  as  to  symbols — Causes  of  his 
excessive  indulgence — Two  standards :  scientific  Stoicism  for 
Prospero,  Epicurianism  for  Caliban — Renan's  Positivism — Ex- 
clusion of  piecemeal  supernaturalism — His  attitude  on  the  ques- 
tion of  recorded  miracles — Based  on  Rationalistic  prejudices,  not 
on  scientific  principles — Esthetic  and  spiritual  value  of  religious 
symbols— Metaphysics  :  nothing  is,  everything  grows — God  :  in 
the  making,  the  growing  consciousness  of  the  world — Conclusion : 
a  power  for  good. 

CONCLUSION 

A  Retrospect  and  a  Forecast 256 

Spiritual  activity  of  the  period  studied — Its  cheerlessness — 
Anxious  questionings  as  to  the  religious  future  of  France. 

1.  A  Return  to  Christianity  :   Protestantism  and  Catholicism     .     259 

Protestantism  in  France  represents  neither  the  past  nor  the 
future — Catholicism :  its  alliance  with  reaction — Can  it  be 
severed  ? — No  chance  for  a  compromise — Possibility  of  a  schisin 
— Great  material  and  spiritual  assets  of  the  Church— Voltairian- 
ism on  the  wane,  but  national  return  to  Catholicism  improbable. 

2.  New  Churches  and  New  Religions 267 

The  Revolutionary  Cults — The  Churches  of  the  Romantic  period 
(Abb6  Chatel,  Mapah,  etc.) — Modern  minor  religions — Saint- 
Simonism — Comte's  Positivist  Church— Natural  Religion  (Eclec- 
ticism or  Theism) — Substitutes  for  religion  :  Patriotism — The 
Revolution  —Socialistic  Humanitarianism — Science . 

3.  Supernaturalism  and  Naturalism 278 

The  Irreligion  of  the  Future — Is  religion  bound  up  in  any 
theology  ? — Optimism  of  the  Naturalist— Pessimism  of  the  Super- 
naturalist — Doubts  and  fears — Hope  unconquerable. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 282 

INDEX , 284 


INTEODUCTION 

SCOPE  AND  METHOD  OF    THIS  BOOK 

1.  Is  France  lost  to  Christianity  ? 

Is  France,  the  land  of  the  Crusaders,  the  eldest  daughter  of  the 
Church,  irrevocably  lost  to  Christianity  ?  Such  is  the  problem 
upon  which  this  book  would  attempt  to  throw  some  light. 

That  Anti-clericalism,  or  opposition  to  the  political  influence 
of  the  Church,  is  one  of  the  cardinal  principles  of  the  Third 
Republic,  cannot  be  doubted  for  a  moment.  Active  resistance  to 
"the  encroachments  of  Rome"  w^as  the  policy,  not  of  narrow 
fanatics  and  hot-headed  Radicals  alone,  not  merely  of  brilliant 
and  somewhat  erratic  individuals  like  M.  Cl^menceau,  but  of 
men  like  Gambetta,  Jules  Ferry,  Waldeck-Rousseau,  in  every 
respect  the  strongest  and  sanest  statesmen  of  the  regime.  Anti- 
clericalism  in  France  is  not  a  passion,  not  a  crisis,  but,  as 
Waldeck-Rousseau  put  it,  a  permanent  necessity.  So  far,  at 
least,  England  and  America  find  it  easy  to  sympathise  with  the 
French  Republic.  No  democracy  can  tolerate  the  intervention 
of  theocracy  in  its  purely  secular  affairs.  England  never  brooked 
Popery  as  a  political  power ;  and  the  United  States  would  be  as 
impatient  of  such  interference,  if  it  were  proved  to  exist  on  a 
national  scale,  as  ever  England  or  France.  On  this  point 
French  Protestants  are  unanimous,  and  the  great  majority  of 
moderate  and  tolerant  Catholics  tacitly  agree  with  the  great 
majority  of  fair-minded  free-thinkers.  We  may  reasonably 
hope  that  the  lesson  of  the  last  ten  or  twelve  years,  sharp  and 
unequivocal  as  it  was,  was  not  lost  on  the   Catholic  Church  : 


10        FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

France  will  not  be  governed  from  the  Vatican.  This  phase  of 
the  question  already  belongs  to  the  past ;  a  few  old-fashioned 
politicians,  whose  occupation  would  be  gone  if  Anti-clericalism 
ceased  to  be  a  vital  issue,  still  attempt  to  raise  the  cry  "  Down 
with  Kome  !  "  ;  but  the  echo  of  their  voices  grows  fainter  and 
fainter.     The  era  of  acute  anti-clerical  strife  is  closed. 

But  the  question  has  gone  beyond  that  stage.  The  Church, 
her  hierarchy,  her  traditions,  her  dogmas,  have  all  been  drawn 
into  the  battle.  So  freely  has  her  spiritual  power  been  wielded 
on  behalf  of  certain  political  parties,  that  its  downfall  now 
threatens  to  follow  theirs.  Catholicism,  clericalism,  reaction, 
are  synonymous  in  the  popular  mind.  As  a  result  of  this  con- 
fusion, there  are  signs  that  the  Church  is  fast  losing  her  hold  in 
France.  In  spite  of  the  Pope's  uncompromising  opposition  to 
the  Separation  Law,  the  country  endorsed  the  policy  of  the 
Kadicals.  Unable  to  secure  the  repeal  of  that  law,  Rome 
attempted  to  render  its  application  impossible :  a  few  isolated 
riots,  strongly  condemned  by  all  reasonable  Catholics,  and  the 
loss  of  much  property  that  could  easily  have  been  saved,  were 
the  only  fruit  of  this  defiant  attitude.  The  legal  status  of 
Catholicism  thus  remaining  ill-defined,  many  Churches  left  out 
of  repair  are  condemned  as  unsafe,  closed  and  demolished  ;  there 
is  a  movement  of  protest  among  artists,  antiquaries,  and  men  of 
letters,  but  the  people  as  a  whole  seem  indifferent  to  the  slow 
crumbling  down  of  their  ancient  places  of  worship.  Have  the 
French  peasants  fallen  into  such  a  state  of  apathy  and  torpor  that 
they  passively  accept  whatever  order  Paris  chooses  to  send 
them  ?  Not  so :  the  vine-growers'  riots  in  the  South  and  in 
Champagne,  the  newly-formed  unions  of  agricultural  labourers, 
show  that  the  "  sons  of  the  soil  "  are  more  nervously  alive  than 
ever  before,  impatient  of  the  least  shadow  of  tyranny,  and  all  too 
prompt  to  action.  They  deem  a  label  on  their  wine-bottles 
worth  fighting  for — they  will  not  stir  their  little  finger  for  the 
Church  of  their  fathers.  Catholicism  may  still  claim,  nominally, 
the  majority  of  the  French  people  ;  the  force  of  habit  still  leads 
to  the  old  Church  the  steps  of  many  passive  Catholics  who  are  at 
the  same  time  active  Voltairians  :  but  the  old  exclusive  dominion 
is  gone   for  ever.     France  is  drifting — or  growing — away  from 


INTRODUCTION  11 

Kome.     The  English-speaking  nations,  still  overwhelmingly  non- 
Catholic,  have  no  right  and  no  desire  to  blame  her  for  that. 

But  this  second  stage  too  is  passed.  Just  as  Catholicism  was 
so  hopelessly  entangled  with  Clericalism  that  the  downfall  of  the 
one  threatens  to  engulf  the  other,  Christianity,  in  France,  seemed 
so  absolutely  inseparable  from  Catholicism  that  its  position  has 
become  very  critical  indeed.  It  is  no  secret  that  in  the  land  of 
Calvin  and  Coligny,  Protestantism,  unchecked  by  statute  or 
popular  prejudice  for  over  a  century,  has  made  no  visible  pro- 
gress. Most  State  teachers,  the  majority  of  political  men,  are  - 
confessed  agnostics ;  many  are  blatant  atheists  and  bitter  anti- 
Christians.  There  the  Anglo-Saxon  public  cease  to  sympathise 
with  the  French,  and  even  to  understand  them.  Accustomed,  and 
rightly  so,  to  connect  the  name  of  Christianity  with  everything 
that  is  pure,  holy,  and  beneficent,  they  must  find  conditions  in 
France  bewildering,  to  say  the  least.  They  are  not  ready  to  side 
unreservedly  with  the  Roman  Church.  Yet  when  they  see  an 
anti-clerical  Premier  *  laughed  to  scorn  in  the  Chamber  of 
Deputies  for  daring  to  repudiate  materialism  ;  when  they  hear 
a  Minister  of  Labour  t  applauded  for  the  now  historical  sentence  : 
**  We  have  extinguished  in  the  heavens  lights  which  shall  never 
be  kindled  again  !  "  ;  when  they  are  told  that  the  word  "  God," 
tabooed  from  all  official  documents,  is  expunged  even  from 
grammatical  examples  in  elementary  schoolbooks — when  they 
witness  such  a  carnival  of  impiety,  sometimes  intolerant,  some- 
times merely  contemptuous,  they  are  tempted  to  support  those 
who,  whatever  their  faults  may  be,  at  least  profess  themselves 
Christians.  For  all  this  strikes  deeper  than  Clericalism,  deeper 
than  Catholicism,  to  the  very  roots  of  Christianity  and  of 
religion  itself. 

One  might  feel  inclined  to  dismiss  the  whole  problem  with  a 
shrug  by  asserting  that  infidelity  is  the  unenviable  monopoly  of 
small,  noisy  groups  of  immoral  men  and  women — a  froth  that 
conceals  for  a  while  the  deep  ocean  of  a  people's  faith. 
Preachers  will  point  to  the  misdeeds  of  the  Boulevard  set  in 
Paris  and  to  certain  noisome  literature  only  too  well  known  the 
world  over  as  **  French  "  ;  and  the  lesson  of  the  sermon  will  be 

•  M.  Combes.  t  M.  Viviani. 


12   FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

that  wherever  men  abandon  the  cause  of  God,  it  is  because  they 
are  eager  to  serve  the  devil.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Parisian 
smart  set  is  neither  better  nor  worse  than  that  of  other  great 
cities,  and  is  made  up  of  fast  livers  from  the  four  corners  of  the 
world.  The  yellow-back  literature  referred  to  above  is  concocted 
by  cosmopolitan  soul-poisoners  for  international  consumption. 
Neither  has  anything  to  do  with  free-thought,  nor  much  to  do 
with  France  as  a  national  entity.  The  problem  is  both  wider 
and  different.  Wider :  for  apostasy — we  must  not  shrink  from 
an  ugly  word — is  not  limited  to  a  thin  corrupt  stratum  in  French 
society  :  it  has  spread  far  and  sunk  deep.  Different :  for  it  is 
not  true  that  impatience  of  moral  restraint  is  the  sole  or  even 
the  chief  motive  of  men  for  throwing  off  the  yoke  of  Christian 
theology. 

We  must  needs  insist  on  this  point,  for  no  fair  discussion  of 
the  problem  is  possible  until  this  dangerous  fallacy  has  been 
removed  from  our  path.  The  most  outspoken  adversaries  of  the 
old  faith  were  not  *'  decadent "  writers  like  Baudelaire,  Barbey 
dAurevilly,  Verlaine,  Huysmans  :  they  were  lay  saints  like 
Quinet,  Michelet,  Taine,  Kenan,  Littre.  There  is  no  more  sense 
in  slandering  such  men  as  these,  even  by  implication,  than  there 
would  be  in  casting  a  slur  on  the  lives  of  Darwin,  Spencer, 
Huxley,  or  John  Morley.  The  adversaries  of  Christianity  are 
only  too  prone  to  seize  upon  any  scandal  that  may  break  out 
in  religious  circles,  and  triumphantly  to  exclaim  :  "  There  is 
Christianity  for  you  !  "  It  used  to  be  an  article  of  faith  among 
a  certain  class  of  Voltairians  that  all  priests  were  tipplers, 
gluttons,  and  secretly  addicted  to  all  unnatural  vices.  Let  us  not 
retort  in  the  same  spirit.  Such  tactics  are  to  be  spurned  ;  with 
the  fair-minded  they  harm  the  cause  that  makes  use  of  them 
more  than  the  one  against  which  they  are  directed.  Let  us 
frankly  recognise,  as  every  thoughtful  student  of  French  affairs 
has  repeatedly  told  us,  that  neither  side  has  a  monopoly  of  vice 
or  virtue.  Eenan  asserted  that  he  had  met  none  but  good 
priests,  and  it  was  a  Catholic  lady  who  first  called  the  atheist 
Littre  a  saint.  Fortunately  no  elaborate  defence  of  France  is 
required  at  present :  it  is  no  longer  the  fashion  to  hold  up  that 
country   as  an  awful  example  for  the  other  nations  to  avoid. 


INTRODUCTION  13 

Not  only  the  leaders  of  free-thought  in  France,  but  the  rank  and 
file  of  their  army,  compare  favourably  with  most  Churches  in  the 
world.  The  country  as  a  whole,  although  officially  estranged 
from  Christianity,  is  law-abiding,  intelligent,  and  prosperous. 
The  people  are  men  and  women  like  ourselves,  not  angels  ;  they 
show  a  fine  sense  of  social  brotherhood,  a  disinterested  love  for 
justice  and  truth  ;  their  standard  of  morality — public,  com- 
mercial, and  private — is  not  lower  than  our  own.  In  other  words, 
they  have  undoubtedly  preserved  the  essentials  of  Christian 
civilisation,  whilst  rejecting  every  article  in  the  Apostles'  Creed. 
Fanatics  the  world  over  denounce  fairness  to  their  opponents 
as  high  treason  against  themselves.  If  we  want  to  understand 
what  people  different  from  ourselves  have  in  their  minds  and 
hearts,  we  should  not,  before  listening  to  them,  brand  them 
as  knaves  and  fools.  Science  and  Christianity  alike  repudiate 
such  a  method.  It  has  been  our  best  endeavour  that  each  rival 
spiritual  scheme  studied  in  this  book  be  treated  with  sympathy 
and  with  the  earnest  desire  of  extracting  whatever  message  it 
may  have  for  the  world.  The  relation  of  right  thinking  to  right 
living  and  to  right  believing  is  still  a  baffling  problem.  No 
doctrine,  no  example  has  ever  proved  to  be  a  panacea ;  among 
the  Twelve,  in  the  presence  of  the  Master,  there  was  one  who 
fell  into  the  snare.  The  theory  defended  by  Bourget  in  his 
Disciple^  according  to  which  a  certain  metaphysical  system, 
professed  by  men  who  are  an  honour  to  their  kind,  is  made 
responsible  for  the  crimes  of  degenerates,  has  long  been 
abandoned  as  a  clumsy  fallacy.  Fairness  to  all  implies  the 
provisional  denial  of  any  absolute  and  exclusive  claim  :  we  hope 
this  judicial  attitude  will  not  be  mistaken  for  one  of  secret 
hostility. 

2.  Importance  of  the  Question. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  point  out  that  the  religious  conditions 
in  France  and  her  spiritual  future  are  of  more  than  local 
interest.  Were  the  problem  purely  French  in  scope,  it  would 
none  the  less  be  unwise  for  us  to  ignore  it.  The  Christianisa- 
tion  of  Korea,  now  proceeding  apace,  according  to  the  report  of 
missionaries,  is  rightly  considered  as  a  phenomenon  of  world- 


14        FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

wide  importance,  both  intrinsically  and  as  a  symptom.  The 
alleged  dechristianisation  of  a  country  which  counts  for  more 
than  many  Koreas  in  the  councils  of  the  world  deserves  our 
most  careful  attention. 

A  time  was — not  so  very  long  ago — ^when  France  held  undis- 
puted primacy  in  civilised  Europe,  when  her  language  and  her 
philosophy  were  equally  current  in  every  Court  and  in  evei7 
salon,  when  "the  world  would  repeat  to-morrow  what  Paris 
thought  to-day."  That  time  is  passed  beyond  recall.  No 
nation  at  present  is  the  recognised  leader  of  all.  The  potency 
of  any  example  set  by  France,  for  good  or  evil,  is  thereby  greatly 
diminished.  We  should  not  believe,  however,  that  it  has 
become  negligible.  In  mere  bulk,  if  that  appeals  to  certain 
coarse-grained  thinkers,  France  with  her  colonial  empire  still 
counts  among  the  great  nations  of  the  world,  ranking  next  to 
Britain  and  Russia,  and  abreast  of  the  United  States.  Her 
intellectual  influence  on  the  huge  neo-Latin  world  is  still 
paramount;  on  the  Slavic — another  young  giant — it  is  fully 
equal  to  any.  She  no  longer  is,  as  her  sons  boasted  of  yore,  a 
queen  among  nations  ;  but,  while  she  ungrudgingly  acknowledges 
many  friendly  rivals,  she  recognises  no  superior. 

But  the  problem  is  not  limited  to  the  territories  where  the 
speech  of  France  is  understood ;  it  is  universal,  not  national,  in 
scope.  The  battle  raging  so  fiercely  in  France  is  going  on, 
more  obscurely,  all  the  world  over,  in  the  heart  of  every  thought- 
ful man.  Will  Theology  stand  in  the  light  of  modern  science  ? 
To  what  extent  is  Christianity  bound  to  self-styled  orthodoxy  ? 
Is  the  future  of  religion  inseparable  from  that  of  Christianity  ? 
A\[  these  questions,  debated  in  secret  anguish  within  many 
Anglo-Saxon  souls,  are  in  France  thrashed  out  publicly,  fear- 
lessly, almost  recklessly,  and  the  boldest  solutions,  from  which 
we  unconsciously  shrink,  are  not  silenced,  but  applauded  on  the 
banks  of  the  Seine.  Hence  our  paradoxical  contention  that 
France,  famed  only  as  the  country  of  bantering  scepticism,  is  in 
truth  one  of  the  world's  spiritual  laboratories,  where  dangerous 
and  possibly  useful  experiments  are  being  attempted  ;  from  the 
foolhardiness  or  the  heroism,  as  you  may  choose  to  call  it,  of 
these  daring  investigators,  we  of  the  more  plodding,  conservative 


INTRODUCTION  15 

turn  of  mind  may  have  something  to  learn.  That  such  fearless- 
ness in  the  discussion  of  religious  problems  has  its  drawbacks  is 
freely  conceded.  To  put  oJQf  the  cloak  of  conventionalities  and 
lay  their  souls  bare  before  a  jeering  world  seems  to  many  a 
profanation.  Keligion  contains  so  much  that  is  intimate,  un- 
utterable, that  no  public  debate  can  do  it  justice.  In  such 
matters  arguing  and  criticising  will  always  seem  shallow,  even 
flippant,  lacking  in  reverence  and  in  spirituality.  The  imponder- 
able and  yet  essential  elements  of  faith  baffle  the  analyst.  They 
vanish  in  the  heat  of  controversy.  What  is  left  is  on  one  side 
a  dead  mass  of  superstitions,  on  the  other  incurable  scepticism 
and  despair. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  uneasy  silence  of  many  among  us  is 
not  the  result  of  reverence,  but  of  cowardice.  And  therein  lies 
a  danger  greater  than  the  first.  A  belief  not  openly  disputed 
may  degenerate  into  a  prejudice.  We  should  air  our  inmost 
sanctuary,  else  our  purest  incense  will  make  its  atmosphere  foul 
and  irrespirable.  Worshippers  at  a  sealed  shrine,  our  hearts 
would  be  gnawed  with  the  doubt  that  perhaps  the  taunt  of  our 
adversaries  is  true,  and  that  there  is  naught  within  but  a  handful 
of  ashes.  It  is  a  sickly  faith  that  shuns  broad  daylight  and 
needs  the  closeness  and  gloom  of  a  cave. 

3.  Historical  Treatmejit  Necessary, 

This  book,  therefore,  will  be  not  an  apology  for,  but  a  pre- 
sentation of  the  French  attitude  in  religious  matters.  Our 
desire,  as  we  have  already  stated,  has  been  to  make  this  pre- 
sentation as  objective,  as  dispassionate  as  possible.  This  end 
we  could  not  hope  to  achieve  if  we  were  to  describe  the  present 
phase  of  the  question.  Dust  and  smoke  still  cover  the  battle- 
field. No  man,  not  even  a  saint  like  Littre,  a  Proteus  like 
Sainte-Beuve,  an  Olympian  like  Goethe,  can  possibly  do  full 
justice  to  his  contemporaries,  because  he  cannot  know  their  true 
selves,  which  time  alone  reveals.  We  need  a  certain  perspec- 
tive, and  the  collaboration  of  Death,  the  appeaser  of  all  vain 
strife.  Another  reason  makes  a  historical  treatment  of  such  a 
subject  absolutely  indispensable.  We  are  dealing  with  aspira- 
tions which  are  eternal  in  the  human  breast ;  but  the  forms  they 


16   FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

assume  are  neither  necessary  and  unchangeable  through  all 
ages,  nor  arbitrary  and  created  anew  by  each  individual.  They 
are  the  result  of  tradition,  the  growth  of  centuries.  The  words 
that  a  man  finds  in  his  heart  as  if  they  were  a  direct  revelation 
imparted  to  him  alone  were  first  spoken  generations  ago.  He 
cannot  express  himself  except  by  reasserting,  contradicting,  or 
combining  the  beliefs  of  his  spiritual  ancestors,  known  and  | 
unknown.  It  is  literally  true  of  every  religious  controversy  ' 
that  among  those  who  take  part  in  it  the  dead  are  in  the 
majority,  and  bolder,  louder  than  the  living.  Contemporaries  of 
Marcus  Aurelius,  followers  of  Ziska  or  of  Loyola,  countless 
disciples  of  Voltaire  are  with  us  in  any  commonplace-looking 
assembly  of  men.  The  second,  the  thirteenth,  the  sixteenth, 
the  eighteenth,  and  probably  the  twenty-first  centuries  jostle 
one  another.  Religious  conditions  in  France  to-day  are  what 
two  thousand  years  have  made  them. 

Is  it  necessary,  then,  to  retrace  the  origin  of  the  conflict  since 
the  remote  days  of  Clovis,  or  maybe  of  Constantino?  An 
alluring  task,  no  doubt,  but  one  so  vast  that  no  man  could  study 
the  whole  of  it  at  first  hand.  The  sifting  of  innumerable  details 
would  always  be  open  to  the  charge  of  arbitrariness.  It  would 
be  in  every  way  better  to  take  a  late  and  crucial  period,  in  which 
all  the  experience  of  ages  is  accumulated,  and  which  contains,  so 
far  as  we  can  see,  all  the  germs  of  present  developments.  Thus 
the  author  thought  at  first  of  selecting  as  his  field  the  nineteenth 
century,  in  which  all  previous  history  is  summed  up.  Then, 
desirous  of  giving  at  the  same  time  as  exhaustive  and  as  definite 
a  treatment  as  possible,  in  order  to  secure  the  greatest  degree  of 
scientific  accuracy  of  which  such  a  study  is  capable,  he  decided 
to  limit  himself  to  the  period  of  twenty-two  years  during  which 
Louis  Napoleon,  as  President  or  as  Emperor,  was  the  ruler  of 
France. 

That  period  is  brief ;  but  it  was  a  critical  moment  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  religious  thought.  It  saw  the  fall  of  the  Papacy  as  a 
temporal  Power,  and  its  exaltation  as  an  absolute  dogmatic 
authority.  Whilst  Catholicism  was  making  up  in  internal 
strength  for  what  it  had  lost  in  outward  might,  Comte,  Littre, 
Spencer,  and  the  disciples  of  Darwin  ofi'ered  a  complete  system 


INTRODUCTION  17 

of  the  universe  on  a  scientific  basis.  The  struggle  between 
Science  and  Theology  began  centuries  ago,  and  the  end  is  not  in 
sight ;  but  never  before  had  the  contending  parties  been  more 
sharply  defined,  more  fully  conscious,  more  powerfully  armed. 
Never  before  and  never  since,  for  the  conflict  is  by  no  means  so 
intense  at  present  as  it  was  then.  All  the  problems  which  still 
vex  us,  but  of  which  we  have  grown  somewhat  weary,  were  in  all 
their  freshness  in  the  sixties.  As  epoch-making  documents, 
Darwin's  Origin  of  Species,  Kenan's  Life  of  Jesus,  Pius  IX. 's 
SijUahus,  have  not  yet  been  superseded  or  consigned  to 
oblivion.  But  although  they  are  still  of  living  interest  to  us,  the 
great  debates  of  the  time  of  the  Second  Empire  already  belong 
to  history.  Forty-two  years  only  have  elapsed  since  the  disaster 
of  Sedan  ;  but  so  complete  was  the  catastrophe,  so  radical  the 
renovation  under  the  new  regime,  that  the  Second  Empire  seems 
to  stand  much  farther  back  in  the  past.  A  few  protagonists  of 
that  period  still  survive — the  Empress  Eugenie,  Emile  Ollivier. 
They  are  with  us,  not  of  us  ;  they  live  in  their  tragic  memories. 
There  is  a  full  generation  between  Taine,  Renan,  and  ourselves. 
Their  books  are  classics  ;  others,  famous  in  their  day,  are  for- 
gotten. Time  has  brought  its  peace  to  all,  and  we  are  now  able 
to  enjoy  both  Victor  Hugo  and  Louis  Veuillot  without  too  great 
a  strain.  Thus  it  is  possible  for  us  to  study  the  problems  of 
our  own  time,  without  bitterness,  without  passion,  in  the  mirror 
of  history. 

4.  Division :    Theology,  Metaphysics,  Positivism. 

The  Second  Empire,  as  we  shall  try  to  demonstrate,  was  a 
period  of  reaction  against  subjectivism,  sentimentalism,  and 
romanticism  ;  such  reaction  assuming  two  principal  forms,  one 
Catholic,  in  the  name  of  traditional  authority,  the  other 
Positivist,  in  the  name  of  Science.  If  this  definition  be 
accepted,  the  main  lines  of  our  work  will  be  clear. 

For  the  three  parts  of  our  book  we  should  like  to  adopt 
the  names  ''  Theology,  Metaphysics,  and  Positivism."  This 
nomenclature  may  seem  wilfully  misleading.  It  will  be  noticed, 
however,  that  it  is  borrowed  from  Auguste  Comte,  and  we  shall 
take  these  words  in  the  somewhat  special  meaning  that  Comte 

2 


18   FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

gave  them.  Since  such  headings  are  bound  to  be  more  or  less 
arbitrary,  we  have  thought  that  the  division  made  famous  by  the 
greatest  philosopher  of  his  time  would  serve  as  well  as  any. 

The  adoption  of  Comte's  key-words  does  not  imply  any  degree 
of  adhesion  to  his  doctrines,  or  even  to  the  "law  of  the  three 
stages,"  from  which  they  are  borrowed.  According  to  Comte, 
theology,  metaphysics,  positivism  are  three  successive  stages  in 
human  philosophy.  During  the  first,  man  sought  to  explain  the 
riddles  of  the  universe  through  the  intervention  of  supernatural 
powers,  recorded  in  sacred  traditions  ;  this  attitude  is  primitive 
and  now  outgrown.  During  the  second,  abstractions — forces, 
virtues,  principles — the  creation  of  the  human  mind,  were  called 
upon  to  solve  the  same  problems :  a  transitional  stage,  at 
present  nearing  its  end.  In  the  third — inaugurated  by  Comte 
himself,  and  which  is  to  be  final,  the  facts  of  nature  are  allowed 
to  speak  for  themselves.  Perhaps  it  would  be  safer  to  call  them 
**  states"  rather  than  "  stages  "  of  human  development,  *'  faces  " 
rather  than  "  phases  "  of  human  thought,  for  it  is  possible  to 
believe  that  all  three  are  legitimate  and  eternal.  There  is  no 
doubt  as  to  their  co-existing  in  Comte's  time,  each  deeming 
itself  in  the  exclusive  and  definitive  possession  of  truth.  All 
three  belong  to  metaphysics,  since  all  three  deal  with  questions 
which  transcend  the  physical  experience  of  man  ;  all  three  are 
"  theological  "  in  their  method,  for  consciously  or  not,  Positivists 
as  well  as  Christians  draw  logical  conclusions  from  beliefs 
accepted  as  authoritative ;  all  three  are  positive  in  their  own 
eyes,  since  to  a  Christian  the  Revelation  and  his  own  experi- 
ences are  facts  as  solid  and  plain  as  any  dissection  to  a 
physiologist.  The  essential  difference  lies  in  the  source  of  the 
authority  accepted  as  supreme :  in  the  case  of  theology,  Divine 
revelation ;  in  the  case  of  metaphysics,  human  intelligence  ;  in 
the  case  of  Positivism,  the  whole  of  nature  viewed  objectively. 

If  we  accept  these  meanings,  it  will  be  obvious  that  all  genuine 
Christians  belong  to  the  theological  group.  Wliether  they  are 
of  the  emotional,  or  of  the  dry  and  matter-of-fact  type,  their  final 
authority  is  neither  in  their  own  thoughts  and  feelings,  nor  in 
the  facts  of  physical  nature,  but  in  the  Christian  revelation. 
They  may  never  have  studied  the  difficult  science  called  Theology, 


INTRODUCTION  19 

but  in  the  Apostles'  Creed  and  in  the  Shorter  Catechism — in  any 
creed  and  in  any  catechism — all  theology  is  contained,  as  truly 
as  the  oak  is  in  the  acorn. 

By  genuine  Christians  we  do  not  mean  all  professed  Christians. 
Those  for  whom  allegiance  to  their  Church  is  merely  a  habit,  a 
form,  or  a  burden  do  not  belong  here.  But  it  is  easier  in  France 
than  in  England  or  America  to  tell — at  least  among  thinking 
men — a  real  from  a  nominal  Christian.  So  deep  and  lasting 
was  the  influence  of  the  eighteenth  century  that  throughout  the 
nineteenth  the  pressure  of  public  opinion  was  often  more  strongly 
against  Christianity  than  in  its  favour.  In  most  cases  it  required 
on  the  part  of  an  educated  man  a  conscious  effort  to  call  himself 
a  Christian,  whilst  it  did  not  take  any  great  originality  or  heroism 
to  break  away  from  orthodoxy.  The  most  typical  Catholics  we 
have  to  study — Lacordaire,  Gratry,  Veuillot — were  converted  in 
their  manhood  from  natural  philosophy  to  the  doctrines  of  Rome  : 
their  position  was  thus  unequivocal.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
men  who  abandoned  their  traditional  Church  did  so  with  full 
consciousness,  whether,  like  Victor  Hugo  and  Michelet,  they 
proclaimed  their  change  aloud,  or,  like  Lamartine,  Vigny,  and 
even  Renan,  acted  with  more  caution  and  reserve.  The  linger- 
ing Christian,  who  clings  to  the  name  because  he  dares  not 
confess  to  the  world  and  to  himself  his  own  unbelief,  exists  in 
France,  no  doubt ;  but  he  is  not  a  legion  innumerable,  as  in 
England  or  America. 

Another  type  all  too  common  in  our  age  and  country  is  the 
man  who  subordinates  his  faith  to  his  own  feelings  and  opinions, 
and  calls  himself  a  Christian  because  the  teachings  of  Christ 
agi'ee  with  his  own  views.  In  the  Protestant  world  many  such 
men,  active,  sincere,  devoted,  still  remain  within  the  old  Churches 
either  as  the  "liberal"  element,  or  engaged  in  philanthropic 
work.  There  is  a  subtle  confusion,  sometimes  a  semi-conscious 
compromise,  between  genuine  orthodoxy  and  this  veiled  form  of 
humanism.  In  France  there  is  no  room  for  ambiguity. 
Organised  Christianity,  both  Catholic  and  Protestant,  refused 
steadily  and  consistently  to  recognise  *'  natural  religion,"  for 
such  is  the  true  name  of  much  of  our  liberalism.  On  many 
points  it  may  agree  with  revealed  religion.     But  there  must  be 


20   FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

a  final  authority :  is  it  the  Bible  or  human  nature  ?  When 
these  two  conflict  we  must  take  our  choice.  We  cannot  deny 
the  possibility  of  such  a  conflict  without  making  man's  con- 
science a  revelation  of  God's  will  co-ordinate  with  the  Bible. 
If  such  were  the  case,  all  sincere  books  would  be  Bibles  in  some 
degree,  all  earnest  and  noble  lives  would  be  Messianic.  This  is 
Kousseauism,  and  has  no  right  to  masquerade  as  Christianity. 
All  the  disciples  of  Rousseau,  the  great  Romanticists,  Lamar- 
tine,  Hugo,  Michelet,  Quinet,  were  obliged  to  leave  the  Church ; 
the  Eclecticists,  especially  their  leader,  Victor  Cousin,  strove 
hard  to  secure  recognition  from  the  Christian  bodies,  but  they 
strove  in  vain.  Both  supernaturalism  and  naturalism  may  be, 
in  their  outward  manifestations,  sentimental,  intellectual,  or 
pragmatic ;  but,  in  spite  of  all  external  resemblances,  they  are 
essentially  difi'erent  and  can  never  be  reconciled. 

By  metaphysics  we  understand  the  search  for  ultimate  truths 
through  human  reason  considered  as  the  final  authority.  This 
was  the  attitude  of  the  whole  eighteenth  century.  It  implies 
the  denial  of  any  special  historical  revelation  superior  to  reason 
itself,  although  it  may  assume  that  reason  is  the  medium  for  a 
universal  and  eternal  revelation.  Reason,  for  Voltaire  and  most 
of  his  contemporaries,  was  an  intellectual  faculty  best  exemplified 
in  logic  and  deductive  geometry ;  for  Rousseau  the  sentiments 
were  the  deepest  revelation  of  truth.  Intellectualists  and  sen- 
timentalists, the  disciples  of  Voltaire  and  the  disciples  of 
Rousseau,  metaphysicians  of  all  schools,  all  base  their  philosophy 
on  human  nature.  If  Kant,  the  greatest  of  them,  demonstrates, 
or  rather  postulates,  the  existence  of  God,  it  is  on  the  evidence 
of  a  fact  observed  in  the  human  heart — the  categoric  imperative  ; 
he  merely  translates  into  technical  language  both  Rousseau's  ode 
to  conscience  and  Voltaire's  ''  Si  Dieu  n'existait  pas,  il  faudrait 
r  invent  er." 

The  Voltairians  slide  easily  from  reason  into  mere  common 
sense,  which  leads  them  to  a  philosophy  stronger  on  the  negative 
than  on  the  positive  side :  in  a  few,  atheism  of  the  quiet,  light- 
hearted  type ;  in  most,  epicurism  as  a  practical  rule  of  life ;  at 
best,  a  cold,  attenuated  form  of  theism.  Cousin  and  the  Eclec- 
ticists  add   to   Voltaire's   philosophy    some   rhetorical   warmth 


INTRODUCTION  21 

borrowed  from  Rousseau  and  a  stronger  emphasis  on  the  con- 
structive elements.  The  Romanticists  hold  theoretically  the 
same  beliefs  as  the  Voltairians  and  the  Eclecticists,  except  that, 
in  their  case,  Theism  is  being  dissolved  into  Pantheism,  or  pan- 
theistic nature-worship — but  they  hold  them  with  a  degree  of 
enthusiasm  and  a  freedom  from  cold,  abstract  reasoning,  which 
gives  their  best  works  a  deep  religious  value. 

The  metaphysical  state  may  not  be  transitional  historically : 
it  certainly  is  an  intermediate  or  mixed  type  logically.  Some  of 
the  men  of  this  group  kept  in  close  touch  with  Christianity ; 
they  retained  all  its  main  features  except  the  belief  in  the  his- 
torical revelation.  At  the  same  time,  they  were  the  intellectual 
sons  of  Voltaire,  the  champions  of  "progress,"  "enlighten- 
ment "  ;  and  they  thought  themselves  imbued  with  the  scientific 
spirit,  called  themselves  the  Prophets  of  Science.  This  con- 
fusion, at  any  rate,  gave  them  a  wider  range  of  sympathy ; 
Victor  Hugo,  Lamartine,  Michelet  were,  perhaps,  so  great  as 
poets  because  they  were  so  inconsistent  as  philosophers. 

The  Positivist — and  by  this  word  we  mean  not  exclusively  the 
disciple  of  Comte,  but  any  man  holding  a  so-called  scientific 
philosophy — the  Positivist  ignores  the  claims  of  certain  traditions 
to  Divine  inspiration  as  unproved  and  unprovable.  He  considers 
not  only  human  sentiments  but  also  human  reasonings  as  invali- 
dated by  their  subjectivism.  There  are  conflicting  revelations  ; 
there  are  conflicting  philosophies  ;  their  pretensions,  all  absolute, 
are  mutually  destructive.  On  the  contrary,  the  dispassionate 
study  of  facts  will  lead  to  reasonably  safe  and  permanent  results. 
Perhaps  this  method  will  never  be  able  to  answer  ultimate 
questions ;  if  such  be  the  case  these  questions  are,  humanly 
speaking,  insoluble.  ■  Positivism  is  not  atheistic  but  agnostic, 
and  even  its  agnosticism  is  merely  provisional.  One  cannot 
prove  scientifically  that  the  unknown  God  is  unknowable :  such 
a  demonstration  is  logical,  and  therefore  purely  human ;  in  so 
far  as  it  transcends  our  experience  it  belongs  to  metaphysics. 
Thus  Positivism  is  a  confession  of  ignorance  rather  than  a 
solution. 

''     The  strictly  scientific  turn  of  mind  belongs   neither  to  the 
study  of  religion  nor  to  that  of  literature,  for  it  is  the  negation 


22   FEENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

of  both.  That  which  interests  us  is  the  influence  of  such  a 
spirit  on  men  whose  tendencies  were  naturally  different.  Men 
who  were  at  heart  traditionalists,  mystics,  sentimentalists,  or 
rationalists  felt  bound  to  accept  the  scientific  point  of  view :  the 
result  was  a  conflict  between  heart  and  intellect,  between 
aspirations  and  convictions.  Some  tried  to  escape  from  the 
problem  through  the  worship  of  form,  of  art  for  art's  sake — the 
most  aristocratic  brand  of  opium  ;  some  were  driven  to  despair 
by  the  contradiction  within  themselves :  Vigny,  Leconte  de 
Lisle,  Mme.  Ackermann,  Sully-Prudhomme,  Amiel ;  some 
attempted  to  reconcile  all  opposed  tendencies  in  the  synthesis 
of  historical  curiosity  and  sympathy  :  Sainte-Beuve,  Renan.  In 
the  problems  of  practical  life,  few  were  tempted  by  the  easy 
solution  of  epicurism  ;  most  adopted  as  their  doctrine  some  form 
of  stoicism,  of  which  Vigny,  the  greatest  of  them  all,  remains 
the  noblest  exponent. 

Such  is  our  adaptation  to  the  needs  of  this  book  of  Comte's 
Three  States,  We  do  not  mean  to  defend  this  classification  on 
philosophical  grounds ;  even  if  it  were  much  better,  it  would 
never  be  adequate  to  the  infinite  variety  of  human  souls  and 
intellects.  Its  faults  are  obvious ;  but  it  follows  the  division 
into  schools,  sects,  and  parties  that  the  contemporaries  them- 
selves adopted.  When  it  comes  to  the  central  problem  of  their 
religion,  all  Catholics  stand  together — Veuillot,  Gratry,  Hello, 
Montalembert,  divided  in  everything  else,  denounced  Renan  | 
with  equal  bitterness.  Renan,  Taine,  Littre,  may  difi'er  widely  ; 
but,  in  the  eyes  of  their  critics  (Caro,  Dupanloup,  Janet),  they 
formed  one  group.  If  this  rough  classification  only  saves  us 
a  few  repetitions ;  if  through  comparison  and  opposition,  it 
helps  us  to  make  a  few  individual  characteristics  stand  out  more 
clearly,  it  will  have  served  its  purpose  well  enough. 

•  ••.•• 

Such  therefore  is  the  aim  of  this  study :  to  interpret  for  our 
English  and  American  friends  that  aspect  of  French  thought 
which  they  find  hardest  to  sympathise  with.  Religious 
diff'erences,  often  more  apparent  than  real,  are  the  greatest 
obstacle  to  the  genuine  entente  cordiale  which  ought  to 
prevail  between  the  English-speaking  nations  and  France,  their 


INTRODUCTION  23 

sister  in  liberal  thought.  Perhaps  a  frank  and  dispassionate 
statement  of  religious  conditions  in  France,  better  than  any 
ex  'parte  apology,  will  help  remove  a  few  prejudices.  In  this 
hope  this  work  is  offered,  as  a  tribute  of  the  author's  love  for 
France,  the  land  of  his  birth,  for  England,  where  he  grew 
to  conscious  manhood,  and  for  America,  the  home  of 
his  choice. 


BOOK  I 

CHAPTER  I 
CATHOLICISM 

1.  Character  and  Evolution  of  Catholicism  from  1848  to  1870. 

If,  wishing  to  study  the  Catholic  writers  of  the  Second  Emj^ire, 
we  consult  that  wonderful  little  book,  Lanson's  History  of 
French  Literature,  we  shall  find  :  on  Lacordaire,  a  single  page  ; 
on  Veuillot,  a  single  paragraph  ;  on  Montalembert  and  Berryer, 
a  single  sentence  of  four  lines ;  on  de  Laprade,  a  footnote  ; 
on  Gratry,  Hello,  Barbey  d'Aurevilly,  nothing — altogether  less 
than  two  pages,  against  a  hundred  devoted  to  the  free-thinking 
contemporaries  of  these  men. 

We  quote  M.  Lanson  because  of  the  excellence  of  his  work 
and  of  its  representative  value.  On  the  whole,  M.  Lanson 
is  scrupulously  fair.  He  has  little  sympathy  for  the  cheap 
Voltairianism  of  Beranger  ;  he  is  rather  amused  by  the  philistine 
"  Anti-clericalism  "  of  Augier,  or  the  apocalyptic  Anti-clericalism 
of  Hugo,  Eugene  Sue,  Michelet.  He  pays  his  full  tribute  of 
admiration  to  Joseph  de  Maistre,  and — this  is  a  harder  test — he 
praises  Veuillot  sanely,  without  stint  or  strain.  But  Lanson 
was  a  Dreyfusist,  wrote  in  Liberal  papers,  and  his  testimony 
might  be  rejected  as  tainted  with  partisanship.  Messrs. 
Brunetiere,  Doumic,  Faguet,  Jules  Lemaitre,  were  or  are 
staunch  supporters  of  the  Church,  yet  they  agree,  on  the  whole, 
with  M.  Lanson.  In  the  opinion  of  the  best  French  critics. 
Catholic  literature,  in  the  third  quarter  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  counted  for  very  little. 

25 


26   FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

We  must  insist,  for  this  opinion  is  often  challenged,  although 
never  openly.  Brunetiere,  Lemaitre,  Doumic,  Faguet,  after  all, 
are  more  or  less  transfuges  and  converts,  some  of  them  of 
recent  date  and  of  rather  doubtful  orthodoxy ;  they  were 
infected  with  the  virus  of  State  education ;  they  cannot  fully 
get  rid  of  their  pagan  and  rationalistic  prejudices.  In  Catholic 
papers  there  appears  occasionally  some  dark  hint  about  a 
whole  literature  ignored  or  suppressed  by  "  official  "  critics  and 
professors ;  about  a  vast  conspiracy  against  such  historians  as 
Father  Goroni,  or  such  philosophers  as  Blanc-Saint-Bonnet, 
who  ought  to  be  illustrious  and  are  by  tacit  agreement  kept  in 
obscurity;  about  the  necessity  of  rewriting  Petit  de  Julleville 
ad  major  em  Dei  gloriam.  The  hypothesis,  like  all  other  tales 
of  mystery,  has  its  attraction.  It  appeals  to  one's  chivalrous 
sense  of  right ;  and,  after  all,  it  is  not  absurd  intrinsically. 
History  has  had  to  be  rewritten  many  times  over.  The  whole 
of  mediaeval  literature  was,  for  three  centuries,  misunderstood 
or  forgotten.  For  Saint- Simon  glory  began  a  century  after  his 
death  ;  for  d'Aubign6,  two  centuries.  Stendhal,  writing  in  the 
thirties,  expected  to  be  understood  about  1880 — and  he  was. 
Joseph  de  Maistre,  hailed  as  a  genius  by  his  partisans  in  his 
own  lifetime,  did  not  secure  universal  recognition  until  thirty 
years  later.  In  1860  no  critic  would  have  promised  Veuillot 
a  permanent  place  in  literature  :  in  1911  this  place  is  secure 
for  him,  a  high  and  a  large  one.  Hello  is  already  more  than 
an  "illustrious  unknown,"  and  his  twilight  may  grow  into 
a  perfect  day.  Who  knows  but  Blanc-Saint-Bonnet  will  be 
remembered  when  Jules  Simon  is  forgotten  ? 

But,  tempting  as  it  is,  the  theory  is  baseless.  Even  priests 
and  prelates — Father  Longhaye,  a  Jesuit,  Mgr.  Baunard,  the 
President  of  a  Catholic  university — fail  to  reveal  to  us  that 
mysterious,  sacrificed  Catholic  literature.  The  same  few  names 
are  always  quoted:  Montalembert,  Lacordaire,  Veuillot — and 
surely  there  can  be  no  complaint  that  these  three  men  were 
silenced  or  ignored !  The  first  two  were  Academicians ;  they 
had  their  hour  of  popularity  and  influence ;  they  made  more 
noise  in  the  world  than  Vigny  or  Leconte  de  Lisle.  In  the 
case  of  Veuillot  notoriety  had  to  die  down  before  fame  could 


CATHOLICISM  27 

rise.  But  the  promised  unknown  master  remains  a  mystery — 
some  would  say  a  hoax. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  an  immense  hody  of  Catholic 
literature  never  studied  by  critics,  either  because  it  does  not  fall 
within  their  jurisdiction,  or,  we  are  bound  to  say,  because  it  is 
beneath  their  notice.  Of  all  books,  theological  treatises  are 
probably  the  hardest  and  most  technical,  and  if  the  official 
acts  of  the  Church  are  generally  written  with  an  elegance  and 
majesty  unknown  to  civil  documents,  their  style  is  so  impersonal, 
they  are  in  every  way  so  closely  modelled  on  traditional  types, 
that  only  in  exceptional  cases  do  they  rank  as  literature.  Of 
sermons  there  is  no  end,  but — and  this  is  highly  to  the  credit 
of  the  Church — they  are  supposed  to  derive  all  their  merit  from 
their  doctrine  and  their  efficacy,  not  from  the  beauty  of  their 
form  or  the  personality  of  the  orator.  The  brilliant  discourses 
of  Fathers  Lacordaire,  de  Kavignan,  Felix,  Hyacinthe  Loyson, 
at  Notre-Dame  were  officially  styled  lectures,  not  sermons ; 
they  were  almost  a  unique  experiment  in  modern  French 
Catholicism,  and  one  which  filled  many  pious  souls  with  mis- 
givings. Then  there  are  books  of  spiritual  direction  and 
mysticism  :  they  transcend  literature.  Sainte-Beuve,  a  sceptic  ; 
Barbey  dAm-evilly,  a  believer,  both  said,  ''  Where  prayer 
begins,  criticism  loses  its  rights." 

But  there  is  also  the  vast,  insipid  stream  of  edifying  litera- 
ture published  by  such  firms  as  Mame  or  Poussielgue :  well- 
meant  books,  some  of  them  ably  written — not  worse,  on  the 
whole,  than  the  average  Protestant  production  of  the  same 
kind.  "We  shall  have  several  times  to  refer  to  that  expressive 
word  "  bondieuseries,"  freely  used  by  such  good  Catholics  as 
Huysmans  and  Jules  Lemaitre.  Most  foreign  tourists,  on  their 
way  to  the  Luxembourg  or  the  Sorbonne,  have  noticed  the 
religious  art  shops  around  Saint- Sulpice,  with  their  hideous 
statues  painted  in  barbaric  colours — the  shame  of  a  city  which 
calls  itself  the  modem  Athens  :  these  shops  and  their  wares 
are  called  **  bondieuseries."  Their  exact  equivalents  exist  in 
literature.  Such  books  seem  to  reach  an  immense  public.  Les 
Recits  (Tune  Sceur,  for  instance,  had  a  larger  circulation  than 
many  recognised  masterpieces.     We  must  therefore  give  up  the 


28   FRENCH  PEOPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

hope  of  discovering  a  second  French  literature  hidden  behind 
the  one  we  know.  If  there  ever  was  any  systematic  ostracism 
against  Catholic  writers  it  was  practised  by  the  Catholics  them- 
selves. If  Barbey  d'Aurevilly,  Hello,  Villiers  de  I'lsle-Adam 
were  "  excommunicated,"  as  Leon  Bloy*  maintains,  it  was  by 
their  co-religionists ;  not  for  heresy,  but  on  account  of  their 
original  talent,  distasteful  to  the  Philistine. 

What  conclusion  shall  we  draw  from  this  undeniable  insig- 
nificance of  the  Cai/liolic  element  in  literature  ?  Not  that 
Catholicism  itself  was  on  the  wane  and  a  negligible  factor  in 
national  life ;  for  Catholicism  in  many  ways  was  stronger  under 
the  Second  Empire  than  ever  before  in  the  nineteenth  century. 

The  exact  number  of  genuine  Catholics  at  that  time  is  difficult 
to  ascertain  ;  every  man  who  was  neither  a  Protestant,  a  Jew, 
nor  an  open  militant  free-thinker  was  supposed  to  be  a  Romanist, 
and  the  leaders  of  the  party  would  proudly  refer  to  their  thirty- 
six  million  French  co-religionists.  Certain  essential  ceremonies — 
baptism,  the  first  communion,  marriage,  extreme  unction,  and 
burial — retained  unshaken  hold  even  of  the  most  sceptical  part 
of  the  population.  Many  a  Voltairian  who  would  scoff  at  super- 
stition when  the  deepest  mysteries  of  the  Christian  faith  were 
mentioned,  would  never  cut  bread  without  a  sign  of  the  cross 
or  have  a  meat  dinner  on  Good  Friday. 

The  force  of  inertia  kept  many  a  nominal  Catholic  within  the 
fold :  political  circumstances  artificially  increased  the  number 
of  professed,  active  members  of  the  Church,  for  the  Church  had 
become  identified  with  social  conservation.  The  Government, 
with  its  train  of  sceptical  adventurers  and  Jewish  financiers, 
was  devout — more  so  than  ever  was  that  of  Charles  X. ! 
Rigorously  orthodox  too  was  the  saucy,  cynical,  "smart-set" 
Press,  which  so  unexpectedly  made  itself  the  defender  of 
tradition  and  dogma  against  Renan ;  Catholic  also,  the  old 
monarchical  and  Liberal  opposition — including  Protestants, 
Voltairians,  and  Eclecticists — all  ultramontane  since  the  days 
of  June ;  Catholic,  the  French  Academy,  which  admitted 
Dupanloup,  Lacordaire,  Gratry,  because  of  their  sacred  cha- 
racter, and  de  Falloux,  Montalembert,  on  the  strength  of 
*  L6on  Bloy,  Un  Brelan  d^ExcommunUs. 


CATHOLICISM  29 

their  services  to  the  Catholic  cause.  But  many  of  these 
political  converts  were  hardly  Christian  at  all.  Probably  at 
no  time  during  the  nineteenth  century  were  active  Catholics 
a  majority  in  the  country.* 

But  they  remained  none  the  less  incomparably  the  greatest 
religious  power  in  France.  They  alone  had  a  doctrine,  a  tradi- 
tion, an  organisation.  Their  opponents  were  individuals,  or 
small  groups  of  individuals,  with  hardly  a  principle  in  common. 
The  mass  of  the  people  was  amorphous  and  fickle  then  as  now. 
And  if  among  the  large  and  strong  Catholic  minority  there  were 
superstitious  peasants  and  self-seeking  politicians,  there  were 
also  heroes  and  saints  whose  names  do  not  belong  to  literary 
history  and  are  too  often  neglected ;  there  were  such  fine  types 
of  middle-class  usefulness  and  virtue  as  Cochin  and  Bonjean,  of 
brilliant,  unselfish  service  both  to  higher  education  and  to  the 
poor  as  Ozanam,  of  total  devotion  to  charity  as  Sister  Rosalie, 
of  saintliness  in  humble  guise  as  J.  B.  Vianney,  the  famous 
vicar  of  Ars. 

A  large,  powerful  body,  this  is  plain  ;  a  comparatively  poor 
literature,  this  is  hardly  less  certain;  the  discrepancy  is 
striking  and  remains  to  be  explained.  It  would  be  ridiculous 
to  ascribe  it  to  the  very  essence  of  Catholicism ;  in  the  country 
of  Pascal,  Bossuet,  Fenelon,  Chateaubriand,  submission  to  the 
Church  and  literary  genius  are  surely  not  incompatible.  The 
reactionary  spirit,  it  is  maintained,  paralyses  intellectual  activity; 
but,  half  a  century  before,  reaction  had  led  to  a  splendid  revival 
of  Catholic  literatm-e.  Why  did  not  the  Second  Empire  have 
its  Joseph  de  Maistre  and  its  Chateaubriand  ?  Why  did  all 
the  masters  of  French  thought  sever  their  connection  with 
Rome  instead  of  joining  in  the  chorus  of  praise,  as  under  the 
Restoration  ?  Why  was  there  among  the  Catholics  themselves 
such  an  attitude  of  uneasy,  quarrelsome  conservatism  instead  of 
the  joyous  confidence,  the  assertive  leadership  of  old  ?  Some 
lowering,  weakening,  materialising   influence   must  have  been 

•  Cf.  Taine,  Les  Origines  de  la  France  Contemporai7ie,  xi. ;  Le  Ri^gime 
Modeme,  iii. ;  L'Eglise,  p.  183 ;  notes  and  documents  of  ecclesiastical 
origin.  According  to  his  estimato,  one  woman  in  four,  one  man  in  twelve, 
are  "practising"  Catholics. 


30       FRENCH   PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

at  work.  The  Church  represented  no  longer  purely  an  ideal, 
but  also  vested  interests.  We  must  dwell  for  a  moment  on  this 
regrettable  transformation. 

In  1846  Pius  IX.  became  Pope,  and  from  his  accession  he 
showed  such  liberal  tendencies  that  Metternich  and  Gruizot 
shook  their  heads  disapprovingly,  and  that  the  golden  prospect 
of  a  reconciliation  between  Catholic  traditions  and  Democracy 
seemed  brighter  than  ever.  When  the  Revolution  of  1848  broke 
out,  this  wave  of  confidence  and  enthusiasm  was  still  strong  ; 
the  people,  so  violently  hostile  to  the  priests  in  1830,  respected 
them  in  1848  ;  the  clergy  blessed  the  trees  of  Liberty.  In  Rome 
the  Pope  granted  a  constitution,  and  was  already  hailed  as  the 
future  president  of  an  Italian  Confederacy  and  the  head  ot  the 
democratic  party.  Within  a  few  weeks  conditions  changed 
radically.  Whilst  "  the  days  of  June,"  frightening  the  French 
middle  class,  gave  the  ascendancy  to  the  most  conservative 
elements,  Roman  affairs  were  taking  a  revolutionary  and  tragic 
turn.  The  Pope  dismissed  his  liberal  ministers  and  called  to 
power  Rossi,  a  man  of  cosmopolitan  experience  and  unusual 
ability.  But  skilful  though  he  was,  he  found  it  well-nigh  im- 
possible to  steer  between  the  retrograde  pontifical  court  and  the 
democratic  populace.  On  the  15th  of  November  he  was  mur- 
dered by  the  mob  ;  the  Pope  fled  to  the  kingdom  of  Naples,  and 
in  February,  1849,  the  Roman  Republic  was  proclaimed. 

Thus,  by  the  beginning  of  1849,  a  peaceable  settlement  of 
political  and  social  conflicts  had  become  impossible,  and  no 
doubt  could  be  entertained  as  to  which  side  the  Church  would 
take.  In  the  first  place,  Conservatives  and  repentant  Liberals 
rallied  round  her,  because,  every  other  authority  being  ruined, 
she  alone  represented  tradition,  organisation,  power.  Liberal 
Catholicism  was  swept  away.  In  spite  of  all  their  fame,  Monta- 
lembert  and  Lacordaire  had  never  been  whole-heartedly  sup- 
ported by  the  bulk  of  their  co-religionists,  in  whose  eyes  liberty 
remained  a  dangerous  Utopia.  Had  the  Liberals  been  stronger 
in  number,  influence,  or  conviction,  they  might  have  acted  as 
mediators  and  tempered  the  violence  of  reaction.  But  some 
were  afraid,  and  found  it  necessary  to  leave  their  Liberalism  in 
abeyance ;  the  rest  were  distrusted  and  powerless.     Then  many 


CATHOLICISM  31 

came  sincerely  to  believe  that  Socialism  and  Religion  were  in- 
compatible. The  days  of  June  were  considered  as  an  explosion 
of  envy,  hatred,  material  appetites ;  the  songs  in  which  the 
Democrats  claimed  Jesus  as  their  master  were  denounced  as 
blasphemous.  Had  not  one  and  the  same  man,  Proudhon, 
written  the  two  formidable  aphorisms,  ^'  God  is  Evil  "  and 
*'  Property  is  Theft  "  ?  Was  not  the  motto  ''  Neither  God  nor 
Master"  ascribed  to  Blanqui  ?  Finally,  although  the  question 
of  temporal  power  was  not,  strictly  speaking,  a  religious  one,  it 
was  difficult  for  Catholics  to  separate  the  cause  of  Pius  the  King 
-Tom  that  of  Pius  the  Pope.  French  democrats  were  logically 
bound  to  support  Mazzini  and  the  Roman  Republic  ;  Catholics 
were  no  less  naturally  obliged  to  side  with  their  Pontiff  and 
against  revolution.  God,  the  Pope,  property,  law  and  order 
were  all  attacked  by  the  same  enemies  ;  practically  all  Catholics 
became  reactionaries,  and  all  reactionaries,  whatever  their  pri- 
vate beliefs,  stood  as  defenders  of  the  Pope  and  the  Church. 
The  Romanticists,  in  the  early  part  of  their  career,  had  been  the 
**  Knights  of  the  Throne  and  the  Altar  "  ;  the  battle-cry  of  the 
new  crusaders  was  "  The  Pope  and  Property." 

In  the  Catholic  Church  and  party,  therefore,  religion  became 
inextricably  entangled  with  purely  material  interests :  the 
defence  of  private  property  against  Socialism,  the  defence  of  the 
temporal  power  against  Roman  revolutionists  and  Italian 
patriots.  Louis  Napoleon,  as  President  and  as  Emperor,  under- 
took the  double  task  of  saving  society  and  the  Pope.  The 
Catholics  could  not  deny  him  their  support ;  Veuillot,  and,  after 
some  hesitation,  Montalembert  himself,  advised  their  co-reli- 
gionists to  condone  the  coup  d'etat.  Thus  was  the  alliance 
sealed  ;  the  presence  of  a  French  army  in  Rome  remained  its 
sign. 

The  Pope  became  more  and  more  the  master  of  the  situation  ; 
his  temporal  power  stood  as  the  symbol  of  all  conservative 
interests  ;  his  spiritual  authority  was  more  and  more  recognised 
as  absolute.  Every  revolution,  even  when  it  harmed  religion 
or  the  Church,  had  served  the  Papacy.  The  Gallican  spirit 
succumbed  with  the  old  monarchy,  had  a  faint  revival  under  the 
Restoration,  and  finally  died  after  1830.     When  the  King  was 


32   FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

the  successor  of  Clovis,  the  descendant  of  Saint-Louis,  the 
eldest  son  of  the  Church,  his  power  could  balance,  even  in  eccle- 
siastical matters,  that  of  the  Pope  himself.  But  who  could 
accredit  any  authority  in  religious  affairs  to  Louis-Philippe,  the 
Voltairian,  King  by  the  grace  of  the  barricades  ?  When 
Lamennais  transferred  his  allegiance  from  absolutism  to  demo- 
cracy, he  became  at  first  more  ultramontane  than  ever ;  the 
continuators  of  his  work  after  his  schism  were  as  decidedly  anti- 
Grallican  as  they  were  liberal.  The  influence  of  Joseph  de 
Maistre  *  was  steadily  growing.  His  book  on  The  Pope  was 
no  longer  taken  as  a  brilliant  paradox,  but  as  a  political  and 
ecclesiastical  gospel.  The  "Prophet  of  the  Past,"  as  he  was 
styled,  was  becoming  a  prophet  of  the  future.  The  Pope, 
materially  helpless  against  revolution  and  conquest,  was  all  the 
more  blindly  and  lovingly  obeyed  by  his  followers.  No  one 
would  be  so  ungenerous  at  such  a  time  as  to  add  to  his  diffi- 
culties and  sorrows.  All  dissent,  all  opposition  within  were 
silenced.  Ultramontanism  was  triumphant.  In  1854,  the  pro- 
clamation of  the  dogma  of  the  Immaculate  Conception  by  the 
Pope,  alone  and  on  his  own  authority,  was  a  practical  assump- 
tion of  infallibility ;  in  1870  the  Vatican  Council  made  infalli- 
bility a  dogma. 

The  power  thus  attained  was  used  by  Pius  IX.  with  remark- 
able singleness  of  purpose  for  a  war  on  modern  civilisation  and  its 
idols — **  liberty"  and  "progress."  The  European  upheaval  of 
1848  and  his  own  tragic  experience  had  filled  him  with  horror  for 
the  Revolution,  and  for  democracy  and  free- thought  as  the  instru- 
ments and  ideals  of  the  Revolution.  This  humble  country  priest, 
as  he  liked  to  call  himself,  a  man  of  simple  tastes  and  a  kindly, 
cheerful  disposition,  assumed  as  Pope  a  sombre  gi-andeur  which 
impressed  even  his  enemies.  He  was  the  representative  of 
authority — the  sole  authority  not  of  human  origin  but  divinely 
ordained.  All  other  powers  were  either  his  vassals  or  the 
creatures  of  revolution.  He  alone  had  principles  to  oppose  to 
those  of  1789,  and  he  proceeded  to  assert  them  through  his 
semi-official  paper,  La  Civilta  Catolica,  and  in  his  apostolic  and 
encyclical  letters,  with  the  fearlessness  of  a  mystic.  Finally,  he 
*  Latreille,  Joseph  de  Maistre  et  la  PapauU. 


CATHOLICISM  33 

had  a  systematic  catalogue  or  Syllabus  drawn  up  rehearsing  all 
the  errors  that  he  had  previously  condemned  (1864).  In  its 
negative  and  theological  form  this  famous  document  may  be 
interpreted  in  several  diifcrent  ways.  Mgr.  Dupanloup's  clever 
attempt  to  explain  it  away  was  commended  by  the  Roman  court 
itself.  But  Ultramontanes  and  free-thinkers  alike  took  it 
literally  as  an  open  declaration  of  war.  Whatever  may  be  its 
orthodox  interpretation — and  there  seem  to  be  several,  all 
authorised  by  the  Church — the  impression  on  public  opinion 
was  unequivocal ;  the  Syllabus  was  summed  up  in  its  eightieth 
and  last  proposition:  "Anathema  on  him  who  ever  should 
maintain  '  that  the  Pope  can  and  must  be  reconciled,  and 
compromise  with  progress,  liberalism,  and  modern  civilisation.'  " 

In  short,  Catholicism,  under  the  Second  Empire,  was 
influenced  by  four  principal  factors  :  at  home,  its  alliance  with 
political  and  social  reaction;  in  Rome,  the  bitter  memories 
of  1848,  and  anxieties  as  to  the  Pope's  temporal  power ;  the 
growth  of  Ultramontanism,  culminating  in  the  proclamation 
of  papal  infallibility;  finally,  the  thoroughgoing,  fearless 
character  of  Pius  IX.,  which  precipitated  and  intensified 
conflicts  which  a  Leo  XIII.  might  have  averted. 

Hence  the  general  tone  of  Catholic  literature,  in  which  a 
spiritual  note  was  at  that  time  surprisingly  rare.  Veuillot, 
a  pitiless,  unscrupulous  fighter,  jeered  at  the  "  Charitans," 
Montalembert  and  Dupanloup,  who  censured  his  bitterness  as 
unchristian.  But  they,  although  less  coarsely  aggressive,  were 
hardly  more  charitable  than  he.  In  their  works,  under  a  film 
of  traditional  unction,  there  prevailed  a  hard,  unsympathetic, 
materialistic  train  of  thought.  This  was  the  result  of  the 
temporal  preoccupations  in  which  the  Church  was  absorbed, 
and  of  her  open  conflict  with  modern  aspirations.  The  Empire 
built  magnificent  churches  everywhere,  and  gave  Cardinals 
a  seat  in  the  Senate.  But  for  all  this  outward  power  and 
splendour,  it  was  one  of  the  darkest  periods  in  the  history 
of  French  Catholicism. 

2.  /Estheticism  in  Religion :  the  Satanic  School. 
Of  tlie  two   great  Christian   apologists  in  the  beginning   of 
the   nineteenth   century,    Joseph   de  Maistre   was    the   apostle 

3 


34   FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

of  authority  rather  than  of  spirituality ;  Chateaubriand  was 
an  artist  and  a  sentimentalist,  for  whom  the  deep  tones  of 
evening  bells,  the  mystic  twilight  of  a  Grothic  chapel,  the  noble 
melancholy  of  a  ruined  cloister,  were  all-conqueriiig  arguments. 
Absolutism  and  aestheticism  combined  at  first  in  the  faith  of 
all  the  great  Romanticists,  although  with  them  the  influence 
of  Chateaubriand  was  paramount.  After  1848,  however.  Abso- 
lutism, the  gospel  of  authority,  became,  as  we  have  tried  to 
show,  the  dominant  factor  in  French  Catholicism.  Napoleonic 
despotism  and  papal  infallibility  were  supported  by  Veuillot, 
Barbey  dAurevilly,  and  even,  for  a  moment,  by  the  pseudo- 
Liberal  Montalembert.  iEstheticism,  the  cult  of  beauty,  had 
seceded.  It  was  in  democracy,  not  in  the  Catholic  Church, 
that  Michelet  and  Hugo  now  sought  their  inspiration ;  and 
the  men  who,  under  the  Second  Empire,  had  the  keenest  sense 
of  beauty  in  religious  matters  were  Leconte  de  Lisle,  a  rabid 
antichristian,  and  Kenan,  in  whom  the  Church  recognised 
her  subtlest  and  deadliest  foe. 

Great  as  the  influence  of  Le  Genie  clu  Christianisme  may 
seem  to  have  been,  it  was  probably  never  very  deep.  By  1848 
all  its  force  was  spent.  Chateaubriand  himself  allowed  his 
scepticism  and  disenchantment  to  be  surmised  under  the  noble 
cloak  of  his  orthodoxy.  With  genuine  Catholics  a  faith  based 
on  sensuousness  and  sentimentalism  was  discredited :  it  had 
led  astray  all  its  most  famous  adepts.  For  the  rising  genera- 
tion of  realists  and  positivists,  it  embodied  all  the  faults  of 
Romanticism — vagueness,  arbitrariness,  subjectivism.  For  pure 
artists  it  had  come  and  gone,  like  any  other  fashion :  after 
Chateaubriand,  Lamartine,  Vigny,  Hugo,  Catholicism  had 
become  a  hackneyed  theme,  good  enough  for  provincial  poets, 
like  Laprade,  Reboul,  and  Brizeux.  Jocclyn  was  perhaps  the 
last  great  success  of  sentimental  Catholicism — but  it  was  already 
verging  on  Rousseauist  religiosity.  La  Chute  cVun  Ange,  which 
appeared  soon  afterwards  (1886),  was  a  failure.  Soumet's 
Divine  Epopee  was  voted  to  be  tedious.  Hugo  was  sketching 
the  portrait  of  his  ideal — and  real — Bishop  Myriel ;  but  he  did 
not  publish  it  until  1862,  in  Les  Miserahles,  and  then  deftly 
turned  it  into  an  apology  of  humanitarianism  and  a  satire  on 


CATHOLICISM  35 

the  modern  clergy.     The  cult  of  heauty  no  longer  led  to  Catholic 
altars. 

Or,  if  it  did,  it  was  through  strange  and  devious  paths.  To 
the  Serapldsm  of  Lamartine  and  Vigny,  all  purity,  all  harmony, 
succeeded  the  Diabolism  of  Baudelaire  and  Barbey  d'Aurevilly, 
a  compound  of  mysticism,  lubricity,  and  pathology.  But  both 
the  white  flower  and  the  morbid  growth  were  natural  offshoots 
of  Le  Genie  du  Ghristianismc.  Sentimentalism  in  religion  is 
ever  a  dangerous  thing ;  but  when  it  is  intensified  by  literature, 
it  leads  straight  to — the  devil.  For  the  devil  is  good  litera- 
ture, the  angels  are  not.  He  is  human  through  all  his  faults 
and  sufferings  :  they  are  beyond  the  scope  of  our  imagination. 
Then  there  lurks  in  all  of  us  a  secret  sympathy  for  daring 
rebels :  Prometheus,  Satan,  even  Cain  ;  cold,  submissive  per- 
fection we  cannot  endure.  Even  in  Sunday-school  books  the 
bad  little  boys  are  generally  more  attractive  than  the  good 
ones.  On  the  heroic  scale  we  find  that  Milton's  angels  of 
darkness  are  singularly  more  vivid  than  their  pure  and  glorious 
brothers.  Vigny 's  Eloa  falls  an  easy  prey  to  the  charms  of 
Satan.  Much  of  Byron's  success  was  due  to  his  attitude  of 
defiance  and  revolt.  If  the  devil  had  not  existed,  the 
Romanticists    would    undoubtedly    have    invented    him. 

Innocence,  from  the  literary  point  of  view,  is  insipid.  In 
France,  its  vogue  will  never  last  long.  The  French  would 
rather  boast  of  imaginary  crimes  than  pose  as  more  virtuous 
than  they  are.  It  was  through  their  failings  even  more  than 
through  their  noble  qualities  that  the  Romanticists  could  expect 
to  retain  the  attention  and  sympathy  of  the  public.  Chateau- 
briand taught  them  the  possibilities  of  sin.  Mere  guilt  would 
pall  on  the  taste  almost  as  rapidly  as  innocence  itself.  Guilt, 
on  the  ordinary  plane,  is  simply  vulgar  ;  and  when  it  is  not 
commonplace  and  half-hearted,  it  is  brutal  :  a  genuine  criminal, 
after  all,  is  an  uninteresting  personage.  But  religion  trans- 
mutes guilt  into  sin  ;  it  gives  it  a  place  in  the  great  drama 
of  the  universe ;  it  provides  a  foil  for  it,  enhances  its  value, 
intensifies  remorse,  creates  an  admirable  contrast  between  our 
abjectness  and  our  aspirations.  So  Chateaubriand,  the  arch- 
sentimentalist,    posed   as    though,    through    some    unutterable 


36   FRENCH  PEOPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

crime,  he  had  incurred  a  mysterious  curse.  Byron,  whose 
influence  was  second  to  that  of  Chateaubriand  alone,  was  less 
subtle  because  he  was  less  orthodox ;  but  he  too  managed  to 
use  mysticism  as  a  means  of  heightening  the  terror,  the 
remorse,  and  thereby  the  "interest"  of  sin.  The  French 
Bomantic  poets  were  law-abiding  citizens,  whose  most  heinous 
crime  against  society  seems  to  have  been  slackness  in  their 
duties  as  National  Guards  ;  yet  most  of  their  heroes  — Hernani, 
Didier,  Antony — "  bore  the  fatal  sign  on  their  pale  brow."  Rene, 
Manfred,  and  their  progeny  were  already  Fleurs  du  Mai  and 
Diaholiques. 

As  for  the  weirdness,  so  striking  in  Barbey  dAurevilly,  and 
which  Baudelaire  was  long  supposed  to  have  borrowed  from  Poe, 
it  was  also  one  of  the  elements  of  early  Romanticism.  The 
taste  for  the  supernatural  began  far  back  in  the  eighteenth 
century.  Much  of  the  favour  enjoyed  by  Hamlet  and  Faust  was 
due  to  their  elements  of  mystery  and  terror.  Hoffmann's  tales 
had  a  wider  and  more  lasting  popularity  in  France  than  in  their 
own  country,  and  so  widely  read  and  admired  was  Melmoth  the 
Wanderer  that  Balzac  himself  wrote  a  Melmoth  reconcilie. 
The  great  vogue  of  the  Middle  Ages  brought  witchcraft  and 
demonology  into  favour.  Even  such  a  sunny,  healthy  pagan 
poet  as  Gautier  cultivated,  fifteen  years  before  Baudelaire,  the 
morbid  and  the  uncanny. 

Mysticism  and  terror  are  blended  in  the  "  Diabolic  "  school 
with  love,  or  rather  with  sensuality.  This  combination  is  by 
no  means  modern.  Baudelaire  himself  dated  it  back  to  the 
last  days  of  the  decadence  of  Rome  :  "  Mysticism  is  the  other 
pole  of  that  magnet  of  which  Catullus  and  his  band,  poets  whose 
love  was  simply  brutal  and  skin-deep,  had  known  only  the  pole 
*  sensuality.'  "  Long  before  the  publication  of  Michelet's 
amusing  and  highly  romantic  Sorcierc  (1862),  the  alliance  of 
demon- worship  and  debauchery  in  witchcraft  was  a  common- 
place of  popular  history.  And  not  only  the  Spanish  mystics 
with  daring  crudity,  but  even  the  French  Quietists,  had  sys- 
tematically interchanged  the  vocabularies  of  spiritual  and 
earthly  love. 

The  fondness  of  the  DiaboUsts  for  physiological  details  of  a 


CATHOLICISM  37 

harrowing  nature — wounds,  sores,  diseases,  and  "  ce  je  ne  sais 
quoi  qui  n'a  de  nom  dans  aucune  langue  " — is  another  familiar 
feature  of  orthodox  Romanticism.  The  hospital,  the  charnel- 
house,  and  the  grave  were  favourite  themes — even  with  Gautier  ! 
Hugo  described  monsters  and  tortures  with  visible  gusto ; 
M^rimee,  in  his  coolest,  most  dispassionate  tone,  loved  to  relate 
blood-curdling  stories  of  suffering  and  death.  Dumas,  kindly 
and  childlike,  took  pride  and  pleasure  in  exhibiting  physical 
pain  on  the  stage  {Henri  III.  et  sa  Cour,  Christine,  etc.)-  The 
poems  of  Sainte-Beuve  read  at  times  like  versified  clinical 
reports. 

Baudelaire  and  Barbey  d'Aurevilly,  therefore,  did  not 
have  the  cheap  merit  of  originality.  They  were  belated 
stragglers  of  the  great  Romantic  army,  not  renovators  or  initi- 
ators. Needless  to  say  that  there  is  more  in  them  than  degene- 
rescent  Romanticism — than  self-conscious,  carefully  cultivated 
morbidity.  Else  their  names  would  be  forgotten,  like  so  many 
others,  in  a  dark  corner  of  the  Romantic  museum.  Such  is  not" 
the  case  :  their  fame  is  alive  to  this  day.  Even  at  their  worst, 
they  are  interesting  as  extreme  types  of  certain  sentimental  and 
spiritual  deformations. 

It  is  difficult  to  determine  the  limits  of  Baudelaire's  sincerity. 
The  Flowers  of  Evil  is  not  a  straight  confession — that  much  is 
certain.  There  is  a  Baudelaire  legend — that  of  an  eccentric, 
half-crazy  personage,  subtly  corrupt,  addicted  to  poisonous  drugs 
and  monstrous  vices.  The  poet  resented  this  opprobrious 
legend ;  but,  impelled  by  his  inner  demon  of  perverse  mystifi- 
cation, he  could  not  help  encouraging  its  growth.  It  had  some 
slight  foundation  in  fact :  not  enough  to  give  The  Flowers 
of  Evil  the  value  of  a  clinical  document.  It  is  not  a 
scientific  study  either.  This  was  Baudelaire's  specious  plea 
when  the  book  was  prosecuted.  But  the  very  title  is  anti- 
scientific  :  it  implies  a  double  judgment,  one  of  moral  reproof, 
the  other  of  esthetic  admiration.  His  daily  life  was  not  pictured 
in  his  verse ;  his  whole  soul  was  not  in  his  work,  but  his 
imagination  at  least  was  there.  His  poetry  was  the  mirror  of 
his  dreams. 

Now,  to  Baudelaire,  the  dream-life  meant  more  than  to  many 


38   FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

of  his  healthier,  happier  contemporaries,  Cramped  in  his 
material  circumstances,  isolated  in  his  pride,  "  yawning  his  life  " 
like  Chateaubriand,  he  sought  a  refuge  in  "the  ideal,"  as  he 
chose  to  call  it,  and  when  he  came  into  contact  with  reality,  he 
used  it  only  as  a  stuff  to  make  dreams  of.  Thus  it  became 
impossible  to  disentangle  his  fancies  from  his  true  self.  They 
were  unreal,  and  yet  the  only  reality  he  cared  for.  His  poems 
were  a  pageant  which  he  gave  to  charm  the  ennui  and  solitude 
of  his  soul,  and  the  pageant  became  his  very  soul.  The  identity 
between  the  man  and  the  work  grew  to  be  so  complete  that  he 
had  to  write  :  "  Must  I  tell  you,  you  who  have  not  divined  it  any 
more  than  the  others,  that  in  this  atrocious  book  I  have  put  all 
my  heart,  all  my  tenderness,  all  my  religion  (travestied),  all  my 
hatred  ?  It  is  true  that  I  shall  write  the  reverse,  that  I  shall 
swear  it  is  purely  a  work  of  art,  a  piece  of  mimicry  and 
jugglery — and  I  shall  lie  like  a  charlatan."  * 

That  dream-life  of  his  was  coloured  by  his  own  sad  experi- 
ence and  by  his  intense  desire  for  originality.  Heredity,  failure, 
disease,  had  made  him  morbid ;  the  influence  of  low  Roman- 
ticism fixed  vague  tendencies  into  a  permanent,  semi-conscious 
attitude  ;  pride  sought  for  this  attitude  a  philosophical  sanction. 
The  beauty  of  sanity  and  harmony  came  to  strike  him  as 
offensively  vulgar.  Goodness  and  truth  were  good  and  true 
enough  for  the  "modern  rabble"  he  so  thoroughly  despised. 
All  religions  of  healthy-mindedness,  optimism,  progress,  nature, 
were  hateful  to  him.  Catholicism  was  at  hand  to  provide  him 
with  a  doctrine.  As  a  man,  as  an  artist,  as  a  thinker,  he  found 
satisfaction  in  the  more  sombre  aspects  of  its  mysticism  and 
theology.  The  doctrine  of  total  depravity,  the  corruptedness  of 
the  flesh,  the  constant  presence  of  the  enemy,  the  haunting  fear 
of  death  and  of  eternal  punishment — he  needed  such  notions  as 
these  for  imparting  to  his  fancies  the  haut-gout  he  was  craving 
for.  At  the  same  time,  their  spirituality  gave  them  distinction, 
kept  them  far  above  the  brutal  pessimism  of  materialists  like 
Taine.  Theological  and  ecclesiastical  terms  and  images  are 
constantly  found  in  his  poetry  :  angels  and  demons,  sin,  hell, 
damnation,  sacraments,  priests,  monks,  bells,  cathedrals,  incense, 

*  Corr.  522. 


CATHOLICISM  39 

ex-voto.  This  is  not  a  mere  literary  trick,  but  the  expression 
of  his  habitual  train  of  thought.  To  Flaubert  he  wrote  :  ''I 
cannot  .  .  .  account  for  certain  sudden  acts  and  thoughts  of 
man,  without  the  hypothesis  of  the  intervention  of  an  Evil 
Power  not  in  himself."  *  "  All  heresies  are  but  the  consequences 
of  the  great  modern  heresy — the  artificial  doctrine  substituted 
for  the  natural  doctrine — I  mean  the  suj^pression  of  the  doctrine 
of  original  sin."  f 

But  the  Catholic  poet  remained,  first  of  all,  a  seeker  after 
sensations  and  a  sentimentalist.  He  was  not  satisfied  with  the 
mere  description  of  sin  and  its  horrors  ;  he  must  needs  taste  and 
analjJse  the  enjoyableness,  the  fascination  of  that  very  horror, 
the  flower  of  evil:  *'  The  charms  of  horror  appeal  only  to  the 
strong."  I  The  libertine,  yearning  insatiably  for  the  obscure 
and  the  uncertain,  loves  his  own  hell.§  Pride  in  one's  own 
reprobation  takes  the  place  of  remorse.  Consciousness  in  doing 
evil  is  "the  last  relief,  the  sole  glory  "  of  the  sinner. ||  Thus  he 
gives  himself  the  illusion  of  a  free  choice,  and  even  in  spiritual 
disaster  remains  the  captain  of  his  soul. 

Systematic  depravity  could  go  no  farther.  Downright 
blasphemy  would  not  make  matters  worse.  On  the  contrary : 
whoso  takes  pride  in  evil  must  not  obscure  the  distinction 
between  good  and  evil,  else  his  perversity  would  lose  much 
of  its  zest.  The  three  pieces  entitled  Mcvolte  are  not  in 
harmony  with  the  true  Baudelairian  spirit.  They  proceed 
from  the  assumption  that  Satan  and  Cain  were  "wronged," 
that  there  is,  as  Viguy  said,  a  gi'eat  historical  case  to  be  judged 
anew  before  the  court  of  our  conscience.  Such  a  view  is  an 
unnatural,  inverted  form  of  moralism,  a  paradoxical  but  genuine 
craving  for  justice  and  truth ;  it  may  be  depraved,  it  is  not 
perverse.  Baudelaire  affirmed  that  these  three  pieces  were 
mere  pastiches ;  and  it  seems  safe  to  accept  his  word  for  it. 

Sainte-Beuve  compared  the  Flowers  of  Evil  to  a  nightmare, 
to  a  temptation  of  St.  Anthony,  just  before  the  cock  crows 
and  the  sleeper  wakes ;  these  feverish,  disordered  fancies  would 
soon  be  dispelled  by  the  light  of  day.     But  this,  to   Sainte- 

•  Corr.  268.  t  Ibid.  85.  \  Fleurs  dti  Mai,  278. 

§  Ibid.  207.  II  Ibid.  244. 


40   FEENCH  PEOPHETS  OF  YESTEEDAY 

Beuve's  regret,  the  reader  was  not  made  to  realise.  The 
great  critic  himself  had  known  morbid  hom-s  and  outlived 
them :  Consolations  had  followed  Joseph  Delorme.  But 
Baudelaire's  imagination  was  one-sided  and  wholly  diseased. 
He  never  woke  to  normal  life  again,  as  Goethe  did  after 
Wertlier.  Yet  there  are  in  his  poetry  notes  which  seem  to 
herald  the  dawn :  all  too  few,  but  all  the  more  precious. 
Such  are : — 

"Through  the  operation  of  some  avenging  mystery 
In  the  slumbering  brute  an  angel  awakens  "  ;  * 

and  the  closing  lines  of  Le  Voyage  a  Cythere  : — 

"Ah,  Lord!  give  me  the  force  and  the  courage 
To  contemplate  my  heart  and  my  body  without  disgust. "f 

In  these  outbursts  of  remorse,  Baudelaire  rivals  Verlaine  at  his 
best.  A  few  more  such  touches,  and  he  would  have  made 
good  his  claim  that  the  Flowers  of  Evil  is  *'  filled  with  ardent 
spirituality." 

As  it  is,  the  book  is  a  remarkable  feat  of  poetic  skill ;  it  has 
psychological  merit  and  even  some  moral  interest ;  but  it  does 
not  ring  true  as  religious  literature.  Its  intermittent  sincerity 
is  smothered  by  downright  affectation,  sensationalism,  and  senti- 
mentalism ;  in  its  mixture  of  mysticism  and  sensuality,  the 
latter  is  evidently  the  predominant  element.  A  faith  used  for 
adding  spice  to  lustful  pleasure  must  be  of  a  very  equivocal 
character.  Catholicism  was  for  Baudelaire  a  good  working 
hypothesis ;  had  Pantheism  inspired  him  with  more  enjoyable 
dreams,  he  would  have  adopted  it  with  the  same  degree  of  semi- 
sincerity,  j  And  his  final  religious  opinions  are  perhaps  truly 
expressed  in  this  passage:  "  When  I  am  absolutely  alone,  I  shall 
seek  out  a  religion,  Tibetan  or  Japanese — for  I  despise  the  Koran 
— and  at  the  time  of  my  death  I  shall  abjure  this  last  religion, 
in  order  to  show  clearly  my  disgust  for  universal  stupidity."  § 
Yet    Baudelairianism    is    not   essentially    different    from    the 

*  F.  du  M.  154.         t  Ibid.  321— cf.  also  UExamen  de  Minuit,  218. 
J  Corr.  428.  §  Ibid.  386. 


CATHOLICISM  41 

religious  attitude  of  Chateaubriand  or  Lacordaire.  When 
the  author  of  poems  censured  for  their  immorality  aspired  to  the 
succession  of  the  ascetic  Dominican  friar  in  the  French  Academy, 
this  was  considered  even  by  his  friend  Sainte-Beuve  as  a  piece 
of  impertinence  and  studied  eccentricity.  There  is  no  reason 
to  believe  that  Baudelaire  was  not  in  earnest.  As  he  wrote  to 
Alfred  de  Vigny,  there  were  between  Lacordaire  and  himself 
two  bonds  of  kinship :  Christianity  and  Eomanticism.* 
Esthetic  sentimentalism  in  religion  has  its  seamy  as  well 
as  its  glorious  side,  and  they  are  not  so  far  apart  as  one 
would  imagine. 

Baudelaire  is  the  best  known  exponent  of  depraved  Catholicism. 
He  was  neither  a  great  thinker  nor  a  supreme  artist ;  Barbey 
dAurevilly  was  better  informed,  as  keen  an  observer,  and  a 
more  productive  writer.  But  Baudelaire  never  left  his  own 
narrow  field,  and  he  showed  in  it  a  rare  power  of  poetic 
concentration.  There  were  half  a  dozen  men  in  Barbey 
dAurevilly,  and  for  that  reason  he  remains  to  this  day  one 
of  the  "  illustrious  unknown  "  of  French  literature. 

Like  Baudelaire,  he  had  his  legend.  The  theorist  of 
Dandyism,  the  enthusiastic  biographer  of  Beau  Brummel, 
the  belated  Romanticist  who  at  seventy  sported  in  Paris  his 
lace  cuffs,  his  gold-braided,  tight -fitting  trousers,  his  hat  lined 
with  red  velvet,  with  the  swaggering  grace  of  a  musketeer  and 
the  gravity  of  a  prophet,  was  considered  as  a  hoary  child,  a 
harmless  lunatic,  one  of  the  amusing  curiosities  of  the  capital. 
Those  who  knew  him  better  added  that  he  was  a  "  pyrotechnic  " 
conversationalist ;  his  irrepressible  and  paradoxical  fancy  would 
take  the  form  of  unexpected  and  dazzling  images,  which  went 
sky-high  and  left  night  darker.  He  was  also  reported  to  be  a 
staunch  believer  in  the  existence  and  influence  of  the  Devil — 
perhaps  a  Devil-worshipper  himself,  a  seeker  after  strange 
sensations,  who  would  fain  discover  an  eighth  capital  sin. 
A  thorough  gentleman  withal,  a  model  of  unfailing  kindness 
and  old-fashioned  courtesy,  and,  for  all  his  Dandyism  and 
Satanism,  his  coruscating  and  truculent  wit,  as  simple  as 
a  child. 

*  Corr.  328-332. 


42       FEENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

Baudelaire  admired  his  first  novels — Une  Vieille  Mattresse, 
L'EnsorceUe — which  indeed,  several  years  before  the  publication 
of  the  collected  Fleurs  clu  Mai,  offered  the  true  Baudelairian 
compound  ;  vice  and  crime  with  a  dash  of  mysticism.  The  tales 
Les  DiahoUques  (published  1874)  belong  even  more  strikingly 
to  the  same  school.  Barbey  revels  in  descriptions  of  sin,  per- 
versity, demoniacal  possession.  Yet  Diabolism,  like  Dandyism, 
is  only  one  aspect  of  his  talent,  and  should  not  be  unduly 
emphasised.  Barbey  differs  from  Baudelaire  in  many  respects, 
li'irst  of  all,  he  is  openly,  almost  blatantly  orthodox — and  his 
religion  is  not  so  much  a  part  of  his  literature  as  of  his  politics. 
Baudelaire  invoked  de  Maistre,  but  he  was  pre-eminently  a 
sentimentalist,  a  disciple  of  Chateaubriand.  Barbey  is  a  much 
more  consistent  advocate  of  the  principle  of  authority,  a  more 
genuine  follower  of  de  Maistre.  Then,  although  he  probably 
believed  in  the  Devil,  he  did  not  bind  the  fate  of  his  novels  and 
tales  to  such  belief ;  every  incident  could  be  explained  without 
the  intervention  of  a  personal  Prince  of  Darkness.  "  Diabolism  " 
is  rather  a  spice  than  an  essential  ingredient  in  his  works. 
Without  it  they  would  retain  their  value.  Perhaps  they  would 
be  more  seriously  considered  and  better  appreciated.  For  he  has 
many  romantic  qualities — spirit  and  colour,  for  instance,  with  a 
new  touch  of  intense  local  realism.  He  is  the  Homer  of  the 
Valognes  district,  supreme  in  his  little  realm,  and  thereby 
precious  for  all  times.  Let  us  hope  that  the  satanic  dandy 
Barbey  d'Aurevilly  will  not  be  forgotten,  for  he  is  a  picturesque 
and  harmless  figure ;  but  let  us  also  hope  that  he  will  no  longer 
obscure  the  tormented,  lop-sided,  intemperate,  and  powerful 
novelist  of  Le  Chevalier  des   Touches. 

Baudelaire  and  Barbey  d'Aurevilly  did  not  form  a  school ;  yet 
it  would  be  an  error  to  believe  that  they  exhausted  the  possi- 
bilities of  Romanticism,  depravity,  and  Catholicism  combined. 
This  kind  of  literature  kept  its  morbid  fascination,  even  after 
the  excesses,  the  scandal  of  the  Flowers  oj  Evil  and  their  cheap 
vulgar  imitations.  Barbey  dAurevilly  lived  until  1889  ;  this 
patriarch  of  parodoxical  orthodoxy  saw  several  generations  of 
Baudelairians.  He  knew  their  common  ancestor,  Chateaubriand ; 
he  influenced,  criticised,  defended  Baudelaire  himself;    he  read 


CATHOLICISM  43 

Villiers  de  I'lsle-Adams's  pages  of  mystic  and  savage  irony,* 
and  Verlaine's  poems  of  corrupt  love  and  child-like  faith, 
alternate  or  parallel  ;  he  corresponded  with  Leon  Bloy  and  fore- 
told to  Huysmans  that  A  licbonrs  would  lead  him  to  La 
Cathedrale.  Baudelaire's  spirit  extended  its  influence  afar,  and 
that  influence  is  still  with  us :  it  inspired  several  of  Swinburne's 
poems,  f  tainted  for  a  while  Maeterlinck's  true  nobleness  of  soul, 
and  in  the  guise  of  Wilde's  Salome  assumed  the  proportion  of  a 
world-wide  disease.! 

3.   Tlie  Gospel  of  Authority :  D'Aur evilly  and  Veuillot. 

Thus  the  spirit  of  Chateaubriand,  perverted,  but  still  recognis- 
able, lingered  in  French  literature.  The  influence  of  Joseph  de 
Maistre  operated  in  a  very  difi'erent  manner.  Outwardly,  his 
rigid  system  had  under  the  Second  Empire  a  much  more  potent 
action  than  the  vague  and  subjective  religiosity  of  Chateaubriand. 
Even  Baudelaire,  who  sought  in  Catholicism  only  sensations  and 
images,  and  who  was  totally  indifterent  to  the  destinies  of  the 
Church,  disowned  his  romantic  filiation,  and  professed  the 
warmest  admiration  for  de  Maistre  the  Seer.  History,  as 
interpreted  by  the  Conservatives,  seemed  to  support  de  Maistre's 
main  contention  and  to  verify  his  prophecies.  No  stable  society 
without  religion,  no  religion  without  a  Church,  no  true  Churcli 
but  the  Roman  Catholic,  and  no  genuine  Catholicism  without  an 
infallible  Pope  :  such  was  the  gist  of  his  teaching.  It  was 
necessary  to  restore  the  principle  of  authority — but  only  one 
authority  claimed  to  come  directly  from  God  and  showed 
historical  permanency.  Theocracy  was  the  only  alternative  to 
revolution.  A  reaction  would  have  taken  place,  no  doubt,  even 
if  de  Maistre  had  never  written  a  line.  But  his  books  prepared 
men's  minds  for  it.  A  sort  of  dogmatic  authority  was  ascribed 
to  his  writings  :  for  they  provided  the  Conservatives  with  what 
we  are  all  craving  for — principles  in  accord  with  our  interests 
and  passions,  a  theory  that  iustifies  our  practice.     De  Maistre 

*  Tribulat  Bonhornmct.  t  Dolores. 

X  Salome  is  perhaps  the  masterpiece  of  Baudelairiauism,  the  fullest-blown 
flower  of  evil.  Baudelaire's  Une  Martyre  is  not  so  complete,  because  it 
is  not  connected  with  sacred  history,     Cf.  also  M.  Rollinat. 


44   FKENCH  PEOPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

was  given  the  title  wliich  he  had  attempted  to  wrest  from  his 
great  Gallican  adversary,  Bossuet :  he  became  the  "  last  Father 
of  the  Clmrch." 

But  however  great  his  favour  and  even  his  real  influence  on 
the  Catholic  world,*  his  direct  action  on  literature  was  small. 
Only  two  writers  of  note,  Barbey  d' Aurevilly  and  Yeuillot,  were 
unquestionable  disciples  of  de  Maistre,  and  even  in  their  case  it 
is  difficult  to  tell  how  much  they  received  directly  from  him. 

Barbey  d'Aurevilly,  as  a  political  and  religious  philosoj)her, 
was  never  taken  seriously  :  Louis  Yeuillot  was  perhaps  taken  all 
too  tragically.  A  virulent,  unsparing  polemist,  admirably  fear- 
less, but  excessive  and  unscrupulous,  he  had  a  marvellous  gift 
of  righteous  indignation  and  vitriolic  expression.  His  hand  was 
against  every  man,  and  every  man's  hand  against  him.  No  man 
was  more  ardently  hated,  more  vilely  insulted — not  even  the 
Emperor  himself.  Victor  Hugo  would  repeatedly  divert  the 
torrent  of  his  invective  from  "Napoleon  the  Little"  to 
the  Catholic  journalist.  Emile  Augier  made  him  the  invisible 
centre  of  his  satirical  play,  Le  Fils  de  Gihoyer.  His  name 
caused  Montalembert,  his  nominal  leader,  to  lose  his  aristocratic 
self-possession.  Scherer,  the  grave,  learned,  somewhat  ponderous 
critic,  was  never  so  near  raving  as  when  he  reviewed  Les 
Parjums  de  Rome  and  Les  Odeurs  de  Paris.  Even 
Doudan,  the  gentle  ironist,  spoke  of  him  with  unwonted  bitter- 
ness. Only  Sainte-Beuve,  myriad-souled  Sainte-Beuve,  was 
able  to  judge  the  monster  judicially. 

The  doctrines  which  he  defended  with  such  uncompromising 
energy  were  apparently  those  of  Joseph  de  Maistre.  Like  de 
Maistre  and  Barbey  dAurevilly,  Yeuillot  was  a  blind  believer  in 
the  principle  of  authority,  as  opposed  to  the  principle  of 
revolution.  Human  nature  is  corrupt ;  what  it  needs  is  not 
freedom,  which  leads  only  to  evil — not  education,  which  implies 
the  existence  of  good  germs  to  be  developed — but  discipline, 
repression,  and  the  sterner  the  better.  We  need  an  authority 
from  above,  from  without,  to  help  us  conquer  our  evil  instincts. 
Protestantism  and  Philosophy  compromise  with  the  enemy,  the 

*  And  even  outside :  some  of  his  theories  combined  with  those  of  Saint- 
Simon  in  the  mind  of  Auguste  Comte. 


CATHOLICISM  45 

natural  man ;  they  tolerate  or  even  praise  individual  inter- 
pretation, autonomy,  liberty — but  liberty  means  anarchy  and 
dissolution.  The  Catholic  Church  alone  claims  and  exercises 
absolute  spiritual  authority.  She  alone  stands  on  the  side  of 
God,  against  the  first  Revolutionist  and  his  innumerable 
followers,  loose-livers,  free-thinkers,  and  Protestants. 

Veuillot  was  a  thoroughgoing  theocratist,  like  de  Maistre. 
Papal  infallibility  was  one  of  his  dearest  beliefs ;  its  proclama- 
tion in  1870  gave  him  one  of  the  greatest  joys  in  his  life.  Like 
de  Maistre  also,  he  hated  more  than  heretics  or  free-thinkers 
those  orthodox  C?-tholics  whose  obedience  to  the  Pope  was  not 
unconditional.  Gallicans,  Liberals,  were  in  his  eyes  traitors, 
enemies  within  the  gates. 

After  Joseph  de  Maistre  and  with  Barbey  dAurevilly,  he 
defended  Catholicism  in  an  aggressive  manner,  sombre  and 
scornful  at  times,  then  airy,  flippant,  sarcastic,  always  very 
different  from  the  calm  dignity  of  the  older  apologists — the 
majesty  of  Bossuet,  the  unction  of  Fenelon.*  These  modern 
champions  of  orthodoxy  and  discipline  affected  in  their  method 
the  dash  and  irresponsibility  of  free-lances.  They  were  called 
the  Bashi-Bazouks  of  the  Holy  See.  They  did  not  balk  at 
invective  ;  they  indulged  in  pleasantry,  and  revelled  in  paradox. 
They  would  play  endless  variations  on  the  theme  "  Credo 
quia  absurdum,"  thus  sending  the  Voltairians  into  fits  of 
impotent  rage.  Many  good  Catholics  defended  the  Inquisition, 
the  Jesuits,  modern  miracles,  in  an  embarrassed,  half-apologetic 
manner :  then  it  was  that  Veuillot  loved  to  display  his  defiant 
orthodoxy.  It  was  his  principle  never  to  yield  a  point  to  the 
enemy.  If  his  contention  was  weak,  it  had  to  be  reasserted 
with  increased  energy  ;  if  totally  indefensible,  the  affirmation 
ought  to  be  all  the  more  enthusiastic  and  trenchant.  We  can 
see  this  method  and  this  spirit  at  work  in  the  famous  apology 
for  dirt :  ''The  empire  of  the  world  belongs  to  the  dirty  nations. 
.  .  .  All  those  who  love  cleanliness  are  weak.  And  it  must  be 
so.  Whatever  they  say,  the  human  body  is  but  dirt.  God  made 
it  out  of  mud ;  naturally  it  can  find  no  strength  except  in  its 

*  They  might  have  claimed  as  their  model  Pascal,  not  only  in  his 
Provinciales,  but  even  in  his  Pensies. 


46   FKENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

component  elements.  The  soul,  of  course,  must  be  clean ! 
Born  of  the  breath  of  God,  the  soul  is  purity  itself,  and  lives  on 
purity  alone.  But  this  is  the  great  evil :  all  luxuries  for  the 
body  paralyse  and  betray  the  soul.  .  .  .  The  Muscovites  may 
conquer  the  world :  their  triumph  depends  not  on  their  progress 
in  civilisation,  but  on  the  strength  and  duration  of  their  appetite 
for  tallow."  *  This  passage  of  course  is  full  of  humorous 
exaggeration,  although  Father  Longhaye,  like  many  less 
orthodox  critics,  seems  to  take  it  seriously.  But  it  is  the  only 
answer  offered  to  a  very  serious  objection  (the  inefficiency  of  the 
Papal  Government  in  sanitary  matters),  and  it  contains  a 
dangerous  mixture  of  paradox  and  earnest  faith.  The  new 
apologetics  may  provide  easier  reading  than  the  old,  but  will 
hardly  be  considered  more  convincing. 

But  it  seems  as  though  Yeuillot  did  not  care  to  convince  any 
one.  The  nature  of  his  faith  and  his  temperament  made  him 
the  reverse  of  a  missionary.  His  faith  was  so  absolute  that, 
forgetting  he  was  a  convert  himself,  he  came  to  think  that  every- 
body knew  where  the  truth  was;  pride,  cowardice,  perversity 
alone  deterred  people  from  confessing  with  their  lips  what  they 
believed  in  their  hearts.  There  are  no  genuine  unbelievers : 
there  are  only  personal  enemies  of  God.  Whoever,  in  a 
Christian  land,  is  not  a  Christian  (i.e.,  an  ultramontane 
Catholic),  is,  not  a  soul  in  darkness,  to  be  pitied  and  en- 
lightened, but  a  fool  and  a  scoundrel.  The  theory,  monstrous 
as  it  may  seem  to  the  lukewarm,  is  yet  logical  enough.  When 
the  Gospel  is  preached  to  sane  and  moral  men,  and  is  refused  by 
them,  there  can  be  only  two  alternatives :  either  wilfulness  on 
their  part,  for  which  they  are  responsible  in  this  world  and  in 
the  next,  for  it  is  the  sin  of  man  ;  or  spiritual  blindness,  lack  of 
grace,  for  which  they  are  not  morally  responsible,  but  God 
Himself.  The  second  hypothesis  is  in  many  respects  more 
dangerous,  more  monstrous  than  the  first.  If  unbelievers  are 
not  victims,  they  are  criminals. 

Veuillot  had  not  2)atience  with  the  "  Charitans,"  as  he  called 
them,  the  Catholics  who  urged  him  to  be  patient  and  gentle 
with  his  enemies.     No  truckling  to  vice  !  and  heterodoxy  was 

*  Lcs  Odeurs  de  Paris,  438, 


CATHOLICISM  47 

essentially  a  vice.  He  loved  his  enemies,  he  thought,  as  the 
shepherd's  dog  loves  the  sheep.  He  was  commended  of  the 
shepherd :  *  his  conscience  was  at  peace. 

The  intolerance  born  of  his  unreasoning  faith  was  made  worse 
by  the  intemperance  resulting  from  his  early  training  and  the 
nature  of  his  life's  work.  Veuillot  was  a  man  of  the  people. 
His  father  was  a  cooper.  His  own  education  was  neglected.  At 
an  early  age  he  was  allowed  to  read  licentious  eighteenth- 
century  novels  which  could  improve  neither  his  taste  nor  his 
morals.  Later  he  became  a  clerk  at  a  notary's,  and  before  he 
was  of  age  he  was  already  engaged  in  active  journalism.  Years 
of  patient  self-culture  and  the  experience  of  a  varied  life  could 
never  make  up  for  the  want  of  sound  training  and  refining 
influences.  It  was  perhaps  ungenerous  and  pedantic  of  Scherer, 
a  great  scholar  himself,  to  tax  Veuillot  so  severely  with  his 
ignorance :  at  that  time,  Veuillot  had  a  multitude  of  facts  at 
his  command,  but  the  critical  spirit  he  never  acquired ;  he  was 
a  master  of  French  prose,  direct,  personal,  racy,  popular,  and 
yet  in  the  best  classical  tradition — but  "  taste  "  was  a  word  he 
could  not  understand.  In  controversy  he  despiser\  as  insincere 
and  faint-hearted,  the  courteous  fencing  of  gentlemen  and 
scholars  :  strong  words  and  good  hard  blows  were  his  method  of 
settling  a  quarrel. 

A  quiet,  disinterested  occupation  might  have  subdued  the 
vulgarity  of  his  temperament,  but  he  left  the  drudgery  of  office- 
work  for  the  fever  of  journalism.  A  journalist  he  was  from  first 
to  last.  As  a  poet  he  was  generally  mediocre  ;  as  a  novelist  he 
is  forgotten  even  by  the  very  special  public  for  whom  he  wrote  ; 
as  a  purely  religious  writer  {Life  of  Jesus,  Meditations  on  the 
Rosary,  Prayers  to  the  Virgin)  he  is  undistinguished.  All  his 
works  are  either  collections  of  articles  {Melanges)  or  volumes 
written  in  the  same  tone  and  the  same  spirit  as  his  articles. 
His  literary  life  was  a  constant  battle  for  forty  years  :  such  a  life 
intensified  his  pugnacity   and  stunted  the  growth  of  his  gentler, 

*  Pius  IX.,  who  had  much  in  common  with  Veuillot,  supported  him 
against  the  Archbishop  of  Paris  and  the  illustrious  Mgr.  Dupanloup.  His 
mission  in  life,  he  said,  was  to  make  the  persecutors  of  truth,  the  oppressors 
of  conscience  and  intelligence,  feel  the  weight  of  his  indomitable  and  avenging 
scorn  {Odeurs  de  Paris,  xvi). 


48       FKENCH   PROPHETS    OF  YESTERDAY 

more  spiritual  qualities.  Or  rather  it  was  unfavourable  to  the 
literary  expression  of  these  qualities  :  until  his  correspondence 
was  published  none  but  a  few  friends  knew  the  real  man. 

Thus  it  was  that  this  sincere  Christian,  this  great  and  loving 
heart,  spent  his  life  denouncing  and  cursing.  This  turn  of  mind 
served  him  in  one  respect :  he  was  no  philosopher  and  little  of  a 
mystic,  but  he  was  a  powerful  moralist.  If  he  seldom  reminds 
us  of  Bossuet  and  Fenelon,  he  often  is  the  worthy  successor  of 
Moliere  and  of  La  Bruyere.  His  eighteen  volumes  of  Melanges 
and  his  two  best-known  books.  The  Free-Thinkers  and  The 
Odours  of  Paris,  are  mostly  collections  of  moral  satires. 

The  Odours  of  Paris  (in  opposition  to  Les  Parfitms  de  Rome) 
is  Veuillot's  masterpiece.  The  evil  it  denounces  is  not  intellec- 
tual, as  in  the  earlier  Free-Thinkers  (1848) :  it  is  the  result  of 
free-thought,  the  gross,  cynical  materialism  of  Parisian  society 
in  the  closing  years  of  the  Empire.  The  pictures  it  offers  are 
daring,  the  style  crudely  realistic.  Our  sympathy  goes  to 
Yeuillot  in  his  courageous  war  against  undeniable  evils  ;  but 
here  again  he  is  blind  to  one  side  of  the  question.  He  assumes 
that  immorality  and  free-thought  go  hand  in  hand ;  but  among 
the  corrupt  politicians,  journalists,  actresses,  financiers  whom 
he  denounces,  not  a  few  professed  the  most  rigid  orthodoxy. 
Victor  Hugo,  Quinet,  had  their  small  and  even  their  ludicrous 
sides,  no  doubt,  but  they  were  in  exile  for  conscience'  sake. 
Science  is  and  ever  was  bankrupt,  Catholics  assert.  Granted  ; 
but  all  the  prominent  scientists  of  that  time  led  admirable  lives, 
unselfish  and  pure.  Veuillot  was  sincere  and  meant  to  be  fair ; 
but  the  rectitude  of  his  moral  judgment  was  warped  by  his 
intolerance.  The  book  is  a  fine  piece  of  literary  work,  and  a 
precious  social  document :  from  the  religious  point  of  view,  it  is 
worse  than  unconvincing,  it  is  repulsive.  It  ends  fittingly  with 
the  famous  paradox  on  the  holiness  of  dirt. 

The  tone  of  constant  bitterness  and  hatred  which  pervades  all 
the  works  of  Yeuillot  soon  becomes  wearisome.  No  ^\ea  of 
"righteous  indignation"  could  justify  him  for  personal  attacks 
on  the  private  life  or  the  bodily  infirmities  of  men  whose  con- 
victions differed  from  his.  For  the  Revolutionary  motto : 
*' Liberty,  Equality,  Fraternity,"  he  wished  to  substitute  the 


CATHOLICISM  49 

Christian  words  :  "  Justice,  Humility,  Charity."  But  in  the 
daily  practice  of  these  commendable  virtues  he  failed  utterly. 
''His  delight  was  in  cursing;  he  clothed  himself  with  cursing 
as  with  a  garment." 

Yet  he  was  at  heart  kind  and  loving.  Even  if  we  distrusted 
his  long  biography  by  his  brother,  *  we  should  find  in  his  corre- 
spondence the  self-picture  of  a  conscientious,  sane,  and  affection- 
ate man,  more  genuine,  more  manly,  more  lovable  than  most  of 
his  adversaries,  rising  without  an  effort  to  the  heights  of 
silent  heroism  in  his  days  of  trial  and  sorrow.  In  this,  as  in 
many  other  respects,  he  bore  a  curious  resemblance  to  a  man 
whom  he  considered  as  an  Antichrist — P.  J.  Proudhon.  Both 
were  men  of  the  people,  and  remained  men  of  the  people,  even 
after  they  reached  fame.  Both  were  coarse,  violent,  paradoxical. 
Both  hated  the  "  enlightened"  bourgeois,  which,  with  the  words 
"  Progress,  Liberty,"  always  on  their  lips,  thought  exclusively  of 
their  own  welfare.  Both  were  rigid  moralists  in  word  and  deed, 
with  a  pure,  modest,  self-supporting  home  as  their  ideal.  Both 
loved  justice  more  than  liberty,  and  were  ready  to  serve 
Napoleon  III.  if  he  would  be  the  champion  of  right.  Both 
were  full  of  rugged,  popular  eloquence,  and  fond  of  excessive, 
defiant  affirmations.  Both  were  hated  and  combated  even  by 
their  own  party.  They  stand  as  the  most  radical  representatives 
of  opposite  causes — the  Church  and  the  Revolution.  But  on  the 
tomb  of  his  father,  Veuillot  thought :  "  This  social  edifice  is 
built  on  iniquity  :  it  shall  be  destroyed."  He  was  at  heart  a 
Socialist.  Proudhon  devoted  years  of  study  to  the  Bible ;  his 
anti-theism  is  full  of  religious  passion :  a  touch  of  the  hand 
might  have  kept  him  to  Christianity.  Brothers  and  enemies, 
these  two  men  were  greater  than  their  fate  and  better  than 
their  work. 

4.  The  Liberal  Catholics. 

There  are,  or  there  were,  liberal  Catholics,  but  liberal 
Catholicism  is  as  inconceivable  as  liberal  arithmetic.  A  divinely 
aj^pointed  infallible  Church  must  stand  for  authority  and  disci- 
pline.    If  it  tolerates  liberty,  it  can  be  liberty   only  in  non- 

*  Eugene  Veuillot,  a  capital  work  in  every  respect, 

4 


50       FPcE^'CH   PROPHETS    OF   YESTERDAY 


_~'.T  as 


^  _:irch  and  Sta: 
i_r         ':  admitted  : 


o 


oilier  a  piece  c:  :.'.'.~."     ^f  :_      ~«>Dder 
T  ^ism thus  sL  :  1^    :    ..  :_t  v     t_ 


-  .  1 


I-itxe  rr      :   T-     z  -:    ^      '        :t^t  '  —  irf,  Tagne  no 

dooM,   etr  £r      1-       V.           T       _.    :  ::  '   ^  ^erfol 

dUNi^  tc  _:  r  :     .  _    /.   .             7—  iiri.  nineh 

dignity.     !r  v  _ ^  ^                 :  _iined        ^  ._      ::  :        —  nd    if 

Liacomaire  ~z:r  i   .                   ^    _:*iild  say  a         t — ;      vAiitifnl 

one,  haif-eonaeioQ&ij   cuiii  >  r        r  I    for    its 

ef    ::t  zess.      Tl  :  _     irsiion ;  tliej 


■.ij  iooi:t- 


CATHOLICISM  51 

were  not  actors — but  they  were  orators,  passionately  fond  of 
public  speaking  and  its  exhilaration,  and  orators,  after  all,  are 
actors  who  compose  their  own  lines.  Who  can  deny  that  there 
was  some  Romanticism  a  la  Chateaubriand  in  Lacordaire's 
assumption   of  the  white  robe  of  a  Dominican  friar? 

After  the  collapse  of  Romanticism  in  June,  1848,  liberal 
Catholicism  was  a  mere  survival,  an  anomaly.  The  very  term 
became  looser,  more  anibiguous  than  ever.  The  liberal 
Catholic  tendency  was  no  longer  fully  represented  by  the  liberal 
Catholic  party.  This  party  was  a  well-defined  group,  conscious 
of  its  unity,  which  was  consecrated  by  the  famous  communion  of 
La-Roche-en-Breny ;  *  Mgr.  Diipanloup,  Montalembert,  de  Fal- 
loux,  the  de  Broglies,  were  its  leaders.  By  the  side  of  this 
group,  and  not  always  in  absolute  sympathy  with  it,  stood 
Lacordaire,  and  in  the  following  generation  Hyacinthe  Loyson, 
who  were  Christian  orators  more  than  party  men,  and  democrats 
rather  than  parliamentarians.  A  third  aspect  of  Liberalism  can 
be  studied  in  Mgr.  Maret  and  Father  Gratry,  who,  in  the  light 
of  philosophy,  attempted  a  genuine  conciliation  between  the 
Church  and  the  modern  world. 

The  liberal  Catholic  party  secured  from  the  end  of  1848  to 
the  end  of  1851  a  degree  of  influence  which  it  lost  soon  after- 
wards.    But  it  was  its  personnel  rather  than  its  principles  that 
triumphed  for  a  season.     They  were  indeed  able  to  achieve  their 
great  aim — to  secure  the  liberty  of  education  promised  by  the  two 
revolutions  of  1830  and  1848.     But  the  spirit  in  which  this  con- 
quest was  made  was  very  different  from  the  youthful  enthusiasm 
which  pervaded  The  Future  in  1830-31.     The  liberty  of  edu- 
cation was  voted  not   as    a   progressive  but  as    a   reactionary 
measure.     The  bourgeois,  scared  and  infuriated  by  the  repeated 
*  Meeting  of  La-Roche-en-Br(^ny  (Montalembert's  country  seat),  October  12, 
1862.     The  memorial  tablet— in  Latin— reads   as   follows :  "  In   this  chapel 
Felix,  Bishop  of  Orleans  (Dupanloup),  gave  the  bread  of  the  Word  and  the 
bread  of  the  Christian  life  to  a  little  flock  of  friends,  who,  long  accustomed  to 
fight  side  by  side  for  a  free  Church  in  a  free  country,  renewed  their  compact 
to  devote  in  the  same  way  the  rest  of  their  lives  to  God   and  to  liberty. 
Present:  Alfred,  Comte  deFaUoux,  TheophUe  Foisset,  Aug.  Cochin,  Charles, 
Comte  de  Montalembert.    Present  in  the  spirit  :  Albert,  Prince  de  Broglie." 
This  was  denounced  later  by  Veuillot  as  the  mysteries  of  La-Roche-en-Breny, 
the  sect  according  to  Cavour. 


52   FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

revolution  of  1848,  were  only  too  willing  to  strike  an  alliance  with 
the  Church.  The  result  was  the  compromise  known  as  the  Falloux 
law — execrated  by  Radical  Republicans  to  this  day,  denounced 
by  Veuillot  and  the  Theocrats,  but  which,  after  all,  was  fair  and 
liberal  enough  to  stand  the  test  of  sixty  years.  With  some  in- 
dulgence, this  equivocal  measure  can  be  described  as  the  last 
triumph  of  the  liberals.  Henceforth  they  show  nothing  but 
reactionary  tendencies  or  impotence. 

Under  the  Republic  Montalembert  assumed  a  prominent  place 
in  French  politics  :  but  it  was  as  a  strict  Conservative.  '*  Absolu- 
tism may  be  a  great  evil,"  he  said,  "but  revolution  is  evil  itself,  the 
incarnation  of  all  falsehood."  It  was  he  who  uttered  the  well- 
known  words  :  "  We  need  a  Roman  expedition  within  our  own 
borders  [a  VinUrieur]  against  anarchy."  He  was  one  of  the 
chief  agents  of  Louis  Napoleon's  presidential  election,  and  in  the 
anxious  days  between  the  Coup  d'Etat  and  the  plebiscite,  he 
strongly  advised  his  fellow-Catholics  to  vote  in  favour  of  the 
dictator.      Plainly  his  Liberalism  was  in  abeyance. 

But  even  before  the  proclamation  of  the  Second  Empire  he 
turned  round  again  and  went  back  to  his  former  friends  in  oppo- 
sition. Why  this  new  conversion  ?  Was  Napoleon  HI.  no 
longer  the  Saviour  of  Society  and  the  Soldier  of  the  Church  ? 
Veuillot,  more  consistent,  remained  faithful  to  the  Empire  as  long 
as  the  Empire  remained  repressive  and  clerical.  But  Monta- 
lembert's  Liberalism,  in  politics  as  well  as  in  religion,  was  of  a 
curious  type,  of  which  Burke  was  the  most  complete  representa- 
tive, and  which,  in  modern  parlance,  we  would  call  Conservatism. 
He  loved  liberty — that  is  to  say  certain  forms  and  certain  tradi- 
tions, and  the  predominance  of  a  well-to-do  educated  class  ; 
equality  and  democracy  he  hated  and  feared.  The  Napoleonic 
regime,  based  on  the  will  of  the  people  (expressed  directly 
through  plebiscites)  and  almost  Saint- Simonian  in  its  spirit, 
struck  him  as  dangerously  democratic  and  socialistic.  Then  the 
forms  without  which  liberty  such  as  he  conceived  it  could  not 
exist — i.e.,  a  parliamentary  government — were  rudely  swept 
aside.  The  Legislative  Body  was  to  be  a  modest,  practical  assem- 
bly, whose  voice,  until  1860,  did  not  reach  the  public.  Monta- 
lembert had  approved  of  the  sanguinary  repression  of  June,  1848, 


CATHOLICISM  53 

and  condoned  the  regrettable  acts  of  brutality  of  December  4, 
1851 :  but  for  an  orator,  the  suppression  of  the  verbatim  par- 
liamentary report  was  the  one  unpardonable  offence.  From  the 
political  point  of  view,  the  period  of  the  Second  Empire  was  the 
slow  and  painful  agony  of  the  liberal  Catholic  party.  And  when 
it  came  to  power  for  a  moment"  in  1870 — for  Emile  Ollivier  was  a 
friend  of  Montalembert — the  great  leader  was  dying :  for- 
tunately for  him,  for  he  was  spared  the  spectacle  of  a  new  failure 
of  his  opinions,  followed  by  the  downfall,  not  of  the  regime  alone, 
but  of  the  country. 

Ruined  as  a  political  factor,  the  liberal  group  found  its 
position  within  the  Church  hardly  more  satisfactory.  Monta- 
lembert and  his  friends  remained  the  nominal  leaders  of  the 
Catholics,  and  still  enjoyed  some  social  prestige,  but  their 
influence  was  restricted  to  a  very  small  circle.  They  were 
supreme  in  certain  salons  of  the  aristocratic  Faubourg  Saint- 
Germain,  especially  in  that  of  Madame  Swetchine,  a  Russian 
convert,  a  friend  of  Joseph  de  Maistre,  the  confidante  and 
adviser  of  Lacordaire,  a  strong  and  clever  lady  whom  Sainte- 
Beuve,  with  characteristic  irreverence,  nicknamed  a  "  Mother 
of  the  Church."  They  captured  and  controlled  the  most 
famous  of  all  salons — perhaps  the  last — the  French  Academy. 
They  were  generally  supported  by  the  great  liberal  Press — 
especially  by  Le  Journal  des  DehatSj  and  they  had  their  own 
Review,  Le  Correspondant — a  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  with  a 
cassock,  Barbey  dAurevilly  called  it.  Within  these  narrow 
limits  they  were  great  men.  Outside,  and  even  in  Rome, 
Veuillot  alone  outweighed  them  all. 

For  the  Pope  was  committed  to  absolutism — the  only  policy 
consistent  with  his  claims.  The  liberal  Catholics  condemned 
absolutism,  and  yet  remained  Ultramontanes.  No  wonder  if 
they  were  considered  by  most  democrats  and  free-thinkers  as 
hypocrites,  and  by  the  Holy  See  as  unreliable  servants. 
Veuillot,  not  they,  had  the  right  to  speak  in  the  name  of  the 
Pope — and  they  denounced  him  with  a  violence  equal  to  his 
own,  although  expressed  in  more  dignified  language.  Yet 
Veuillot  did  nothing  but  translate  into  strong,  popular  French 
what    Pius   IX.,    Gregory   XVI.,    and    the   long   line   of   their 


54   FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

predecessors,  Grregory  VH.,  Gregory  IV.,  had  affirmed  in  stately 
Latin. 

The  position  of  the  liberals  was  thus  a  paradoxical  one. 
Officially  the  leaders  of  French  Catholics  and  the  obedient 
servants  of  the  Pope,  they  were  openly  distrusted  by  their 
troops,  and  secretly  at  odds  with  their  master.  Montalembert, 
de  Falloux,  de  Broglie,  and  even  Dupanloup  were  trained 
politicians,  and  it  may  be  said  without  irreverence  that  they 
used  their  skill  to  the  utmost  for  dodging  the  issue.  Yet  they 
could  not  avoid  repeated  conflicts — especially  with  such  an 
aggressive  and  uncompromising  foe  as  Veuillot — and,  of  course, 
repeated  defeat.  Three  episodes  will  suffice  to  give  an  idea  of 
this  internecine  war. 

In  August,  1863,  Montalembert  attended  the  Catholic  con- 
vention at  Malines  (Mechlin),  in  Belgium.  He  delivered  one  of 
his  best  speeches  (20-21  August)  :  ''  The  old  regime  is  dead, 
and  will  not  rise  again,"  he  proclaimed.  '*  In  the  old  order, 
we  Catholics  have  nothing  to  regret,  and  in  the  new,  nothing  to 
fear.  Let  us  disown  any  dream  of  theocracy.  Cassars  and 
Demagogues  alike  desire  this  horrible  confusion  of  the  spiritual 
and  the  temporal,  the  ideal  of  all  tyrannies.*  .  .  .  The  Spanish 
inquisitor  who  said  to  the  heretic  :  Truth  or  death !  is  as  odious 
to  me  as  the  French  terrorist  who  said  to  my  grandfather  : 
Liberty,  equality,  or  death !  "  f  These  are  fine  and  strong 
words ;  but  at  the  same  time,  the  Catholic  party — liberals 
included — supported  "  that  horrible  confusion  between  the 
spiritual  and  the  temporal "  in  Rome.  The  advocate  of  toler- 
ation recognised  that  the  individual  conscience  must  be  indepen- 
dent of  the  State,  but  not  of  the  Church,!  and  he  had  admitted 
before,  "unhesitatingly,"  that  if  one  could  suppress  the  liberty 
of  error,  it  would  be  a  duty  so  to  do.§  He  was  obliged  to 
establish  a  distinction  between  the  thesis  and  the  hypothesis  : 
from  the  Catholic  point  of  view  the  liberty  of  thought  is  to  be 
condemned,  but,  under  present  conditions,  and  as  an  expedient, 
it  is  legitimate.     In  spite  of  all  precautions,  contradictions,  and 

*  L'Eglise  libre  dans  VEtat  libre,  Paris,  Douniol,  1863,  p.  102. 

t  Ibid.,  p.  135.  J  Ibid.,  p.  87. 

§  Les  InUrets  Catholiques  au  XlXdme  sUcle,  1852,  p.  99. 


CATHOLICISM  55 

implied  retractations,  the  speech  was  denounced  by  Le  Monde  ;  * 
the  Pope  repeated  that  to  believe  in  the  possibility  of  salvation 
outside  the  Church  was  a  sin,  and  Cardinal  Antonelli,  the 
Koman  Secretary  of  State,  wrote  to  Montalembert  a  letter  of 
blame.  A  new  congress  was  held  at  Malines  the  following  year  : 
Montalembert  found  it  advisable  to  take  no  active  interest  in  it. 

In  1864  came  the  Enc3'clical  "  Quanta  Cura  "  and  the  Syllabus. 
The  Absolutists  were  exultant.  Le  Monde  quoted  with  approval 
the  motto  of  the  Pensamiento  Espaflol :  "  All  our  faith  is  to 
stigmatise,  as  anti-Catholic,  liberalism,  progi'ess,  and  modern 
civilisation."  It  was  a  crushing  blow  for  the  liberals.  But 
Mgr.  Dupanloup  rose  to  the  occasion.  With  admirable 
ingenuity  he  explained  away  the  dangerous  document.  The 
terrible  last  anathema,  so  direct,  unequivocal,  and  inclusive, 
must  have  taxed  Mgr.  Dupanloup's  subtlety  to  the  utmost. 
Finally,  it  was  satisfactorily  twisted  round  like  the  rest.  We 
should  not  say  that  the  Pope  ought  to  be  reconciled  and  to 
compromise  with  progress,  liberalism,  and  modern  civilisation  ; 
of  course  not :  for  that  would  seem  to  imply  that  he  is  not  in 
full  sympath}^  with  them  already.  The  Court  of  Rome,  with  its 
strange  mixture  of  intolerance  and  diplomacy,  approved  Dupan- 
loup's interpretation  as  well  as  that  of  the  Pensamiento  Espaflol, 
By  this  clever  move,  Liberalism  saved  its  face  for  a  season. f 

The  worst  was  still  to  come.  In  spite  of  his  anti-Gallicanism, 
Montalembert  had  ])een  diiven  to  the  conclusion  that  an  absolute 
Papacy  was  incompatible  with  any  form  of  Liberalism.  When 
rumours  began  to  spread  of  the  prospect  of  a  council  he 
welcomed  the  idea.  A  council  was  a  Parliament ;  perhaps  it 
was  time  yet  for  the  constitutional  element  in  the  Catholic 
organisation  to  be  asserted  and  developed.  But  he  very  soon 
understood  that  the  Council  would  be  the  death  of  Liberalism. 
Such  a  reign  of  terror  prevailed  in  the  Church  that  he,  the  great 
leader,  could  not  express  freely  his  opinions.  His  friends  and 
brothers-in-arms,  Dapanloup  and  de  Falloux,  refused  to  insert 

*  Veuillot's  Univers  under  a  now  namo  and  without  Vouillot,  after  its 
suppression  by  the  Imperial  Government. 

t  La  Convention  du  15  Septembre  et  V Encyclique  du  8  Dtcemhre 
(January  13,  18G5). 


56   FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

his  article  in  his  own  paper  Le  Correspondant.  "  Who  could 
have  foreseen,"  he  wrote  to  Lallement,  "...  the  permanent 
triumph  of  these  lay  theologians  of  absolutism  [Veuillot],  who 
had  first  of  all  trampled  under  foot  all  our  liberties,  all  our 
principles,  all  our  ideas  of  former  times  to  serve  Napoleon  III., 
and  then  immolate  justice  and  truth,  reason  and  history,  as 
a  holocaust  to  their  idol  of  the  Vatican?"*  Strong  words 
again  !  But,  illogical  to  the  last,  Montalembert  blamed  his 
friend,  Hyacinthe  Loyson,  whose  secession  was  already  inevit- 
able. He  died  a  week  after  this  letter  was  published.  The 
PojDe  received  at  the  same  time  his  last  printed  words  and  the 
news  of  his  death.  "  This  man  had  a  great  enemy — pride,"  said 
the  Pontiff.!  In  answer  to  a  denunciation  from  a  number  of 
French  bishops,  Pius  IX.  sent  a  letter  of  commendation  to 
Louis  Veuillot ;  four  months  after  Montalembert's  death,  Mgr. 
Dupanloup  left  Eome  in  despair,  on  the  eve  of  the  proclamation 
of  Papal  infallibility.  Liberal  Catholicism  was  finally  conquered. 

5.  Philosopliei's  :  Mgr.  Maret  and  Father  Gratry. 

Montalembert  and  his  group  represent  aristocratic  Liberalism, 
refined  and  narrow,  more  political  than  religious,  and,  through 
its  fear  of  democracy,  led  to  inconsistencies  and  contradictions. 
Lacordaire,  whose  public  career  was  practically  over  at  the  time 
we  are  studying,  was  more  open-hearted,  freer-minded,  more 
popular  in  spirit,  and  not  without  a  touch  of  romantic  daring ; 
but  his  doctrine  lacked  precision ;  he  represented  a  tempera- 
ment, a  sentimental  tendency,  rather  than  a  school  of  thought. 
A  third  aspect  of  Liberalism  remains  to  be  studied :  the 
attempted  reconciliation  between  the  Church  and  modern 
thought,  between  faith  and  science,  in  a  synthesis  of  their 
highest  elements.  Such  efi'orts  are  innumerable  in  Protestant 
countries :  within  French  Catholicism  they  are  extremely 
rare.  The  Church  does  not  favour  reconciliation,  but  insists 
on  unconditional  surrender.     Even  the    most    liberal  Pope  of 

*  Gazette  de  France,  March  7,  1870;  Lecanuet,  Montalembert,  vol.  iii., 
p.  468. 

t  Montalembert  is  not  yet  forgiven  ;  his  centennial  was  not  celebrated  in 
France,  so  bitter  is  still  the  enmity  he  roused  among  the  Absolutists. 


CATHOLICISM  57 

recent  times,  Leo  XIIL,  disapproved  of  modern  philosophy, 
and  wanted  to  restore  St.  Thomas's  Siimma  to  its  full  mediaeval 
authority.  But,  fraught  with  danger  as  it  was,  the  attempt  was 
made,  under  the  Second  Empire,  by  two  sincere  and  courageous 
priests,  Mgr.  Maret  and  Father  Gratry. 

Maret  hoped  to  reconcile  tradition  and  reason  through  a 
revival  of  apologetic  sciences,  exegesis,  sacred  criticism,  his- 
torical criticism,  the  philosophy  of  dogmas,  in  a  liberal  spirit. 
In  other  words,  he  wished  to  find  in  the  immense  arsenal  of 
theology  theories  that  would  suit  his  purpose.  At  first,  such  a 
method  seems  akin  to  that  of  the  three  brothers  in  the  Tale  of 
a  Tubf  who  discovered  everything  they  wanted  in  their  father's 
will,  or  to  the  clever  piece  of  theological  jugglery  by  which  Mgr. 
Dupanloup  transformed  the  Syllabus  into  a  liberal  document. 
The  French  are  as  a  rule  only  too  fond  of  straight,  logical 
thinking,  an  admirable  quality  which  they  carry  to  the  limit  of 
absurdity,  and  not  seldom  beyond.  If  they  are  convinced  of 
certain  truths  for  plain,  scientific  reasons,  they  will  not  seek 
out  an  ambiguous  confirmation  of  the  same  truths  in  ancient 
texts  tortured  out  of  their  original  meaning.  If  the  earth  does 
turn,  it  matters  little  whether  theology  can  adjust  itself  to  the 
fact  or  no.  Whilst  the  English  construe  an  old  Act  so  as  to  fit 
new  conditions,  and  will  probably  apply  an  Elizabethan  statute 
on  falconry  to  the  regulation  of  aeroplanes,  the  French  prefer 
to  pass  an  entirely  new  law  on  a  new  principle. 

Yet  the  attempt,  un-French  as  it  was  and  doomed  to  failure, 
was  noteworthy,  at  least  from  the  practical  point  of  view. 
Intellectually,  it  is  easy  to  do  without  the  doctrine  of  the 
Roman  Church ;  but  there  is  in  Catholic  tradition  and  dis- 
cipline an  immense  capital — poetic,  moral,  spiritual — which  we 
can  ill  afi'ord  to  reject.  Mgr.  Maret  felt  that  the  estrangement 
between  the  Church  and  modern  culture  would  deprive  good 
men,  on  either  side,  of  advantages  which  by  right  were  theirs. 
Even  if  he  did  display  excessive  ingenuity  in  the  service  of 
such   a  cause,  he  might  easily  be  pardoned. 

His  theory  is  by  no  means  incompatible  with  a  certain  con- 
ception of  orthodoxy  and  tradition,  and  curiously  enough,  with 
a  conception  popularised  by  the  great  absolutist  and  infallibilist 


58   FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

de  Maistre,  long  before  Newman  stamped  it  as  his  own  :  the 
doctrine  of  continuous  revelation  through  the  Church,  and 
consequently  of  the  evolution  of  dogma.  This  doctrine  is  of  its 
very  essence  Catholic ;  not  only  does  it  make  the  Church  instead 
of  the  individual  the  final  authority  in  the  interpretation  of  the 
Bible,  but  it  exalts  the  Church  above  the  Bible  itself,  for  whence 
does  the  Bible  derive  its  canonical  sanction,  if  not  from  the 
Church  ?  At  the  same  time,  this  strictly  historical  conception 
allows  every  hope  of  progress.  It  is  a  conservative  but  a  living 
faith,  in  harmony  with  England's  conception  of  liberty,  "  sloAvly 
broadening  down  from  precedent  to  precedent,"  and  with  the 
new  theory  of  evolution,  which,  under  the  Second  Empire,  was 
lust  taking  such  a  hold  of  scientific  minds. 

The  obstacle,  Mgr.  Maret  thought,  was  not  in  the  essence 
of  Catholicism,  but  in  the  present  form  of  its  government.  The 
Pope  was  "  exposed  to  the  ordinary  and  inevitable  temptations 
of  absolute  power."  But  the  Church  need  not  for  ever  remain 
what  it  had  slowly  become,  an  absolute  monarchy.  It  contains 
the  elements  of  an  aristocracy,  and  even  of  a  democracy.  The 
salvation  of  Catholicism  lay  in  a  liberal  constitutional  reform 
through  a  general  council  (Memoir  to  the  Bishops).  Mgr. 
Maret  expanded  these  ideas  in  a  book,  Du  Concile  General  et  de 
la  Paix  Religieuse,  which  was  printed  at  the  expense  of  the 
Emperor.  Humours  went  abroad  that  the  author  was  preparing 
a  schism  on  national-liberal  lines,  with  the  support  of 
Napoleon  III.*  The  impossibility  of  such  a  scheme  is  manifest. 
Maret  had  not  the  temperament  of  a  Luther;  Napoleon  III., 
whose  religious  views  were  somewhat  hazy,  had  no  thought 
of  embarking,  at  such  a  critical  time  for  France  and  his  dynasty, 
on  so  formidable  an  adventure  as  a  new  reformation.  The 
printing  of  the  work  was  delayed  two  years  by  intrigues  and 
secret  hostilities.  When  it  appeared  at  last  in  1869,  the 
triumph  of  the  infallibilist  party  in  the  future  council  was  a 
foregone  conclusion.  Denounced  by  Mgr.  Pie,  the  book  was 
immediately  placed  under  a  ban,  and  after  the  Council  the 
author  himself  assented  to  its  suppression. 

*  Good  observers  at  that  time — Renan  was  one  of  them — seemed  to  believe 
in  the  possibility  of  such  a  schism. 


CATHOLICISM  59 

Mgr.  Maret  had  a  definite  policy  of  Liberalism,  going  to  the 
root  of  the  difficulty,  the  government  of  the  Church  itself. 
The  issue  was  tried  and  decided  against  him.  He  could 
hardly  get  a  hearing  in  the  Council ;  he  was  jeered  at  and 
insulted  by  the  Infallibilists.*  He  was  fighting  against  an 
irresistible  movement  and  several  centuries  of  Church  traditions. 
His  attempt,  so  plausible  in  theory,  did  not  even  attract  much 
attention  at  the  time.  In  our  days  it  is  deeply  forgotten.  The 
Modernists  themselves,  who  tried  to  carry  out  some  of  his 
theories,  never  mentioned  his  name :  his  failure  was  too  sure 
an  omen   of  their  own. 

Father  Gratry  is  better  remembered.  During  the  Second 
Empire  he  was  one  of  the  most  prominent  figures  in  French 
Catholicism.  Brilliant,  ardent,  versatile,  imaginative  and 
systematic  at  the  same  time,  easily  swayed  by  one  idea  and 
not  long  by  the  same,  he  threw  himself  headlong  into  the 
great  controversies  of  his  time.  With  Mgr.  Dupanloup,  he 
waged  war  against  sceptical  and  anti-Christian  philosophers 
(Vacherot  and  Renan).  With  Hyacinthe  Loyson,  and  in  the 
best  spirit  of  Lacordaire,  he  was  interested  in  modern  problems, 
the  needs  of  the  people,  the  cry  of  oppressed  nationalities, 
international  brotherhood,  and  he  wanted  the  Church  to  use 
her  powerful  influence  in  favour  of  all  noble  causes.  Like 
Maret,  but  with  less  prudence,  more  imagination,  and  more 
charm,  he  attempted  to  reconcile  science  and  faith  in  a 
sjmthetic    philosophy. 

Even  when  he  attacl^ed  philosophers,  it  was  in  the  name  of 
philosophy — as  sophists  rather  than  as  infidels.  For  Gratry 
believed  in  Reason,  and  defended  its  claims  right  and  left, 
against  the  fideists  like  Bautain,  who  held  that  faith  transcended 
human  understanding,  and  against  the  French  Hegelians,  who, 
as  he  understood  them,  ruined  all  certitude  with  their  endless 
chain  of  contradictions,  their  universal  relativism,  their  concep- 
tion of  God  as  merely  an  ideal.  The  Catholic  philosopher  was 
in  this  purely  orthodox — for  fideism  is  a  heretical  tendency,  as 

*  In  Mgr.  F^vre's  Histoire  critique  du  Catholicistne  liberal  en  France 
(1897)  the  violence  of  the  attacks  against  Mgr.  Maret  is  almost  incredible 
("a  life  full  of  crimes^'),  yet  Maret  escaped  formal  censure  and  died  an 
archbishop  :    a  masterpiece  of  perseverance  and   diplomacy ! 


60       FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

M.  Brunetiere  discovered  a  little  too  late  ;  at  the  same  time,  he 
seemed  on  this  point  a  more  direct  disciple  of  the  Encyclopaedists 
than  our  modern  free-thinkers.  Reason  defended  in  the  name 
of  the  Church,  by  a  priest,  against  unbelievers :  Voltaire  would 
have  enjoyed  that  paradox. 

But  Reason,  as  Gratry  understood  it,  was  more  than  the 
reasoning  faculty.  The  old  form  of  reasoning,  syllogism.,  is 
barren,  and  the  logic  based  thereon  must  remain  critical  rather 
than  constructive.  Gratry  was  intent  on  realising  a  synthesis 
of  all  forces  in  the  human  mind — intellectual,  sentimental, 
spiritual.  For,  whether  organic,  intellectual,  moral,  or  spiritual, 
life  is  one.  A  machine  could  reason  syllogistically ;  for  a  human 
being,  pride  and  sensuality  are  obstacles,  love  and  virtue  are 
avenues,  to  the  discovery  of  truth. 

Therefore,  instead  of  the  Cartesian  method  of  pure  deduction 
from  intellectual  axioms,  Gratry  adopted  the  Baconian  method 
of  induction  or  transcendence.  Through  this  dialectics,  he 
hoped  to  rise  from  sensible  things  to  intelligible  things,  thence 
to  the  necessary  truths  which  are  "  the  adumbrations  of  God," 
thence  to  God  himself.  In  the  application,  he  used  the 
infinitesimal  method  of  Leibnitz  and  Newton,  without  perhaps 
stating  clearly  enough  whether  he  meant  it  as  a  demonstration 
or  as  an  analogy.  This  gave  rise  to  the  legend  of  his  having 
proved  the  existence  of  God  mathematically  and  given  "the 
formula  of  God." 

But  this  dialectical  progress  necessitates  a  corresponding 
spiritual  progress.  We  must  develop  what  Pascal  called  the 
heart,  Socrates  the  prophetic  soul,  and  himself  the  sense  of  God  ; 
superior  to  abstract  reason,  which  gives  us  only  ideas  ;  different 
from  faith,  which  gives  us  revealed  truth.  If  we  would  but 
conquer  pride  and  sensuality  through  sacrifice  and  love,  then  the 
sense  of  the  divine  would  develop  freely,  and  we  would  realise 
the  absolute  congi'uency  between  the  revealed  Word  and  our 
aspirations  and  needs  :  "  Induction,  sacrifice,  and  grace  lead  us 
to  the  throne  of  God." 

This  philosophy,  like  Cousin's,  was  an  eclecticism.  Gratry 
did  not  believe  in  systematic  doubt  as  a  necessary  first  step ;  we 
should  not  isolate  ourselves  from  the  past  experience  of  the  race, 


CATHOLICISM  61 

we  should  accept  all  the  great  results  acquired  by  human  reason. 
Thus  in  his  treatise  on  the  Knowledge  of  God,  he  passes  in 
review  the  doctrines  of  Plato,  Aristotle,  St.  Augustine,  St. 
Thomas,  Pascal,  Malebranche,  Fenelon,  Petau,  Thomassin, 
Bossuet,  Leibnitz.  But  his  eclecticism  is  very  personal  and 
innocently  unscrupulous ;  for  he  would  **  gently  solicit  his 
authorities,"  *  and  even  hunt  up  favourable  quotations  in  tables 
and  indices.  With  such  a  method  one  could  array  the  Church 
Fathers  against  Christianity ;  but  it  is  brilliant  and  convenient, 
and  is  still  a  great  favourite  with  ortnodox  apologists. 

The  great  objection  to  Gratry's  eclecticism — and  perhaps  to 
all  forms  of  eclecticism — is  that  it  remains  syncretic  rather  than 
synthetic  :  science,  imagination,  conscience,  mysticism,  historical 
revelation,  are  juxtaposed  rather  than  harmonised.  We  have 
already  referred  to  the  somewhat  unexpected  introduction  of 
mathematics  into  theology ;  critics  had  no  difficulty  in  showing 
that  there  was  no  possible  assimilation  between  the  mathematical 
infinite,  which  is  only  the  indefinite,  and  the  metaphysical 
infinite,  which  is  absolute.  The  admirable  chapters  in  De  la 
Connaissance  de  VAme  on  the  place  of  immortal  life  t  are  a 
grand  astronomical  poem,  more  impressive  than  Reynaud's 
Terre  et  del,  by  which  they  were  probably  inspired.  But  they 
are  neither  science  nor  philosophy,  and  still  less  theology  :  they 
are  sheer  Romanticism.  The  affirmation  that  pride  and 
sensuality  are  obstacles  to  the  clear  conception  of  truth  is 
legitimate ;  but  the  assumption  that  truth  and  the  Christian 
revelation  are  coextensive  is  philosophically  unwarranted.  At 
the  bottom,  this  is  the  same  dangerous  and  intolerant  doctrine 
as  Veuillot's  ;  unbelief  is  not  an  opinion,  not  even  simply  a  mis- 
fortune, it  is  a  sin  ;  Renan,  Havet,  Littrc,  even  Vacherot,  are 
not  mistaken,  they  are  perverse.  A  Catholic  philosopher  does 
not  discuss,  he  rebukes.  Finally,  the  introduction  of  the 
miraculous  and  of  mysticism — which  played  no  small  part  in 
Gratry's  life — made  the  logical  and  scientific  passages  futile.  A 
single  breath  from  beyond  dispels  his  elaborate  castle  of  smoke. 

*  The  expression  is  Kenan's — a  confession  as  to  his  own  method, 
t  This  immortal  world  will  be  the  ijiside  of  a  sphere,  at  the  place  towards 
which  all  constellations  are  now  gravitatinpj. 


62   FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

In  short,  Gratry's  philosophy  held  out  magnificent  promises 
which  it  could  not  keep. 

The  true,  the  best  Gratry  was  not  in  his  harsh  and  biased 
criticism  of  modern  *'  sophists,"  as  he  chose  to  call  them,  nor 
in  his  chaotic  metaphysics,  but  in  warm-hearted,  poetical  passages 
throughout  the  heavy  treatises,  in  such  a  little  book  of  spiritual 
directions  as  Les  Sources,  or  in  the  second  volume  of  De  la 
Connaissance  de  VAme,  devoted  to  immortality.  Simple  as  a 
child,  impulsive,  loving,  Gratry  was  meant  to  be  a  spiritual  force 
in  a  non-intellectual  way.  He  was,  like  Lacordaire  and  Loyson, 
a  romantic  humanitarian  in  the  best  sense  of  the  term — a 
believer  in  peace,  fraternity,  democracy,  progress,  a  man  whose 
true  place  would  have  been  by  the  side  of  Lamennais,  Hugo, 
Michelet,  George  Sand,  Pierre  Leroux.  But  for  that  very  reason 
he  was,  again  like  Lacordaire  and  Loyson,  isolated  in  the  Church 
and  distrusted.  The  Council  of  1870  struck  him  as  it  struck  all 
the  other  liberals.  He  had,  more  courageousl}^  although  less  con- 
sistently than  the  rest,  opposed  the  claims  of  the  Papacy.  When 
the  lufallibilists  triumphed,  he  did  not  go  to  the  extreme  of 
seceding,  like  D511inger  or  Loyson  ;  but  for  two  years  he  could 
not  make  up  his  mind  to  give  his  adhesion  to  the  new  dogma, 
and  for  two  years,  in  Belgium  as  well  as  in  France,  he  was 
pitilessly  pursued  by  the  victors,  until  in  doubt  and  despair,  and 
on  the  point  of  death,  he  submitted. 

Perhaps  his  last  declaration  gives  us  the  truest  picture  of  his 
generous  soul :  ^'  My  friends,  you  do  not  doubt  the  position  I 
have  taken  before  God,  before  truth,  before  the  charity  of  Jesus 
Christ. 

"You  who  wish  to  crush  the  human  mind  under  your 
Pharisaical  hypocrisy,  it  is  not  for  you  I  have  laboured. 

"  You  who  wish  for  the  destruction  of  the  unity  of  the 
universal  flock,  it  is  not  for  you  I  have  laboured. 

'^  You  who  want  all  the  truth  in  all  the  charity  of  Jesus 
Christ,  it  is  for  you,  my  brothers,  Christians  visible  and  invisible, 
Christians  hidden  under  other  names ;  for  you,  men  of  con- 
science and  reason,  men  of  kind  hearts  and  goodwill,  you  who 
wish  the  prompt  gathering  of  all  upon  earth,  and  the  Kingdom 
of  our  Father  in  Heaven,  it  is  for  you  I  have  laboured. 


CATHOLICISM  63 

*'  I  hail  you  and  bless  you ;  I  clasp  you  in  my  arms,  and  this 
kiss  of  peace  which  I  give  you,  and  which  several  of  you  will 
receive  in  their  generous  hearts,  is  to-day  for  me  a  pro- 
found joy." 

6.  Ernest  Hello. 

Ernest  Hello  stands  alone.  He  is  perhaps  the  best  example 
in  modern  French  literature  of  the  "  illustrious  unknown."  All 
the  safe  and  authoritative  critics  seem  never  to  have  heard 
of  him,  and  his  name  is  mentioned  with  bated  breath  by  the 
chosen  few  who  love  to  worship  at  a  mysterious  shrine.  He  is 
not  forgotten  or  despised  after  a  season  of  popularity :  he  never 
secured  recognition.  The  general  public  was  not  attracted  by 
books  outwardly  simihir  to  the  insipid  literature  of  piety 
published  by  Mame,  Doiuiiol,  Poussielgue,  or  Vaton.  Among 
Catholics,  Veuillot  knew  him  and  admired  him,  and  Veuillot 
was  then  a  power  in  the  Church ;  but  he  made  no  eflort  to 
bring  out  an  author  who,  incapable  of  self-advertisement, 
gi-eatly  needed  his  support.  Why?  Barbey  d'Aurevilly  and 
Leon  Bloy,  whom  he  treated  with  the  same  indifference,  hint 
that  jealousy  may  have  been  the  reason.  We  prefer  to  believe 
that  Veuillot,  a  busy  journalist  and  a  determined  fighter,  had 
no  use  either  for  independent  artists  or  for  a  dreamy  mystic. 
As  for  the  men  who  are  the  main  strength  of  Catholicism,  and 
who,  being  mystics  themselves,  could  best  understand  and  enjoy 
Hello,  they  are,  as  a  rule,  totally  indifferent  to  secular  literature ; 
to  Leon  Bloy,  who  praised  before  him  Hello's  flashes  of  genius, 
a  monk,  the  head  of  an  important  Order,  replied :  "  All  has 
been  said  by  St.  Augustine  and  St.  Thomas — we  have  no  need 
of  M.  Hello's,  or  anybody's,  flashes."  An  admirably  orthodox 
opinion,  to  be  sure;  it  was  the  one  which  prompted  the 
destruction  of  the  Alexandrian  Library.  Thus  poor  Hello 
remained  without  a  public.  The  tragedy  of  his  fate  was 
that,  weak  and  self-difi5dent,  he  craved  for,  he  imperiously 
needed,  the  stimulation  and  exhilaration  of  fa  Die,  which  was 
ever  denied  him:  **  Without  glory,  one  can  complete  only  the 
skeleton  of  one's  work." 

But  it  was  not  only  the  lack  of  recognition  that  paralysed 


64:        FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

Hello's  development.  He  was,  from  infancy,  sickly,  timid, 
morbid,  and  he  remained  during  the  fifty-seven  years  of  his 
life  a  spoilt  child  and  an  invalid.  His  wife,  active,  capable, 
devoted,  spared  him  all  the  cares  and  hurts  of  material 
existence — but  her  cruel  kindness  made  him  weaker,  more 
abjectly  dependent,  so  that  his  friends  would  at  times  consider 
his  guardian  angel  as  his  curse.  Hello  is  the  type  of  the  poet 
defined  by  Alfred  de  Vigny  and  Lombroso — abnormal  and  ailing. 
Stooping,  haggard,  dragging  his  eternal  umbrella,  he  was  indeed 
Baudelaire's  "  Goeland  "  : — 

"Ses  ailes  de  g^ant  I'empechent  de  marcher." 

Of  his  genius,  himself  and  his  immediate  circle  of  friends 
never  had  any  doubt.  His  soul  was  luminous — absolutely 
pure  and  sincere.  He  had  an  innate  horror  for  anything 
low,  and  when  he  had  said  of  a  thing,  "It  is  loiv,''  by 
sheer  force  of  conviction  he  imposed  his  verdict  on  his 
friends.  He  is  among  the  few  modern  writers  who  give 
their  readers  the  shudder  of  the  infinite.  He  was  a  seer, 
and  one  at  least  of  his  prophecies  was  fulfilled  with  terrible 
accuracy.  In  1867  he  said :  "  The  Tuileries  are  not  yet 
ablaze!  Why  do  the  Barbarians  delay  so  long?"  Three 
years  later  they  came  from  without  and  from  within,  and 
the  old  palace  of  the  French  kings  was  a  heap  of  smouldering 
ruins. 

Hello  was  a  Celt,  a  Breton,  like  all  the  great  leaders  of 
religious  thought  in  nineteenth-century  France,  Chateaubriand, 
Lamennais,  Renan.  But  he  was  in  spirit  a  Celt  of  the  Celts, 
unromanised,  without  Chateaubriand's  classical  culture  and 
Kenan's  Gascon  scepticism  and  humour.  He  was  a  dreamer, 
a  mystic ;  he  despised  plastic  beauty,  order,  logic,  wit,  common 
sense — all  that  was  low.  His  sympathy  went  exclusively  to 
symbolic  art,  to  hieratic  Egypt,  to  the  mysterious  East.  His 
criticism,  guided  by  such  preferences  is,  of  course,  unconvincing 
to  a  ludicrous  degree.  Greece  and  Rome  lack  sublimity; 
iEschylus  and  Homer  are  not  Greeks,  but  Orientals,  and  in 
Plato  there  co-existed  two  men :  a  true  Greek,  a  pagan, 
rhetorical,   sophistic,  heavy,  affected — and  a  Chaldee,   simple, 


CATHOLICISM  65 

grand,  the  one  who  created  the  myth  of  the  cave.  Germany 
he  loves,  because  there  lingers  on  her  an  Eastern  afterglow. 
The  eighteenth  century,  which  wanted  to  eliminate  mystery, 
reached  the  lowest  depths  of  degradation.  Romanticism  is 
defined  as  godless  mysticism — a  yearning  for  the  infinite 
without  Him  who  is  the  infinite.  As  criticism.  Hello's  articles 
and  his  hook  Le  Siecle  are  on  the  same  plane  as  Victor 
Hugo's  William  Shakespeare,  but  as  self-revelation  they  are 
precious. 

With  Father  Gratry,  whom  he  recognises  as  his  master, 
Hello  opposed  philosophy,  which  builds  up,  to  sophistry,  which 
can  only  destroy  ;  synthesis,  which  is  life,  to  analysis  ;  systematic 
faith  to  systematic  doubt.  He  had  no  system  of  his  own ;  he 
was  a  Catholic  and  accepted  the  philosophy  of  St.  Thomas. 
But  as  a  Christian  apologist  he  had  splendid  passages  and 
deserved  to  be  called,  without  irony,  "the  Pascal  of  Keroman." 
Critical  philosophy  leads  to  pyrrhonism,  to  the  negation  of 
religion,  society,  science,  and  art — to  universal  anarchy.  The 
only  alternative  is  Christianity.  The  evidence  of  Catholic 
Christianity  is  its  unity.  It  is  a  miracle  in  itself,  impossible 
according  to  Nature ;  therefore  it  must  be  supernatural. 
"  Thinking  on  these  things,  on  which  my  eternal  future 
depends,  in  the  eye  of  God  whom  I  cannot  deceive,  engaged  in 
the  chain  of  beings,  called  upon  to  make  a  choice,  considering 
that  I  was  created  for  life,  not  for  death,  for  truth,  not  for  error, 
for  love,  not  for  hatred ;  considering  that,  unable  to  reach  by 
my  own  efi'orts  the  goal  of  my  desire,  I  need  a  hand  to  lead  me 
thither,  I  surrender  myself  to  the  Church  eternal."  * 

This  is  an  abdication,  not  a  demonstration.  The  proof 
derived  from  the  unity  and  "  unnaturalness "  of  Christianity 
can  hardly  be  taken  seriously.  Hello,  who  had  at  least  dabbled 
in  the  history  of  early  Christian  sects,!  must  have  known  how 
precarious,  artificial,  and  superficial  such  unity  had  always  been. 
But  the  interest  of  Hello's  philosophy  is  not  in  its  systematic 
side ;  it  lies  entirely  in  its  symbolic  and  mystic  notes,  almost 

*  Philosophic  et  Ath&isme,  300. 

t  Ho  was  fond  of  showing  that  modern  philosophical  errors  had  been 
anticipated  by  the  heretics  of  the  early  Church. 

5 


66       FKENCH  PKOPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

unique  in  his  time  and  country :  "  The  voice  of  creation,"  he 
wrote,  "  is  deep  and  clear,  gentle  and  mysterious.  It  seems  to 
defend  a  secret,  and  gravely  to  invite  men  to  respect  that  which 
they  do  not  know.  ...  It  leads  us  beyond  itself.  .  .  .  But 
deeper  still,  symbolism,  flashing  on  creation  like  lightning 
through  the  night,  throws  a  new  and  more  mysterious  light  on 
universal  order,  which  it  enlarges  without  deforming.  Uniting 
the  visible  with  the  invisible  world,  symbolism  half  discloses  a 
strange  secret :  the  relation  of  relations,  the  harmony  of  har- 
monies ;  and  through  this  new  complication,  the  simplicity  of 
Order  appears  more  gigantic."  * 

Hello  translated  and  edited  two  classics  of  mysticism,  The 
Book  of  the  Visions  arid  Instructions  of  the  Blessed  Angela 
de  Foligno  (1868)  and  The  Selected  Works  of  Rushrock 
[Ruysbroek]  the  Admirable  (1869).  He  himself  "wrestled 
with  the  unutterable,"  as  he  said  of  Angela,  and  the  closing 
lines  of  his  principal  work  attempt  to  transcend  the  limits  of 
human  speech:  *'At  last  we  shall  see  face  to  face  the  Holy 
Ghost,  the  union  of  Father  and  Son,  the  repose  of  their  love. 
Him  who  allows  Himself  to  be  symbolised  by  oil,  and  who 
ordered  to  anoint  the  sick  with  oil  while  praying  for  their 
recovery,  the  peace  and  joy  of  the  Lord,  which  passeth  all 
understanding,  harmony,  immense,  infinite,  eternal,  absolute, 
absolutely  ineffable,  absolutely  adorable,  harmony,  in  a  word, 
harmony,  harmony."  i 

Here  the  very  failure  of  words  suggests  realms  of  thoughts 
and  feelings  beyond.  But  the  very  essence  of  mysticism  is 
incommunicable,  and  much  that  the  mystic  writes  must  seem  to 
the  uninitiated  sheer  nonsense.  Hello  was  conscious  of  this 
limitation  and  expressed  it  admirably :  '*  Their  words  [of  the 
mystics]  are  a  journey  which  they  take,  moved  by  charity, 
among  the  other  men.  But  Silence  is  their  home.  The 
splendour  of  their  language  is  but  the  condescension  of  their 
love :  the  sacred  darkness  in  which  they  spread  their  eagle's 
wings  is  their  ocean,  their  prey,  and  their  glory."  I 

Unfortunately,  our  mystic  was  a  journalist  and  a  controver- 
sialist, who  wrote  for  L'  Univers,  Le  Monde,  Le  Constitutionnel, 
*  L'Homme.        f  Philosojphie  et  Athdsmef  232.        I  Busbrock,  xk. 


CATHOLICISM  67 

Le  Moniteur,  Le  Gaulois,  and  for  Brussels  and  New  Orleans 
papers.  He  had  to  leave  every  day  his  "  sacred  darkness," 
"  Silence,  his  home,"  and  the  intervals  between  flashes  of 
inspiration  were  filled  anyhow.  Sometimes  he  would  use  the 
most  insipid  edifying  style,  and  Huysmans  wrote  later  with 
cruel  truth  that  *' Hello  prophesied  from  a  rock  manufactured 
for  the  Bondieuseries  of  Saint-Sulpice's."  More  frequently  he 
would  imitate  the  pseudo-sublimity,  the  apocalyptic  utterances 
of  Victor  Hugo  at  his  worst,  the  divagations  which  called  on  the 
gi'eat  poet  Veuillot's  sarcasm  :  *' Jocrisse  a  Pathmos."  All  the 
tricks  found  in  Hugo's  Shakespeare,  for  instance,  are  already 
in  Hello's  M.  Renan,  VAtheisme  et  VAllemagne;  the  alterna- 
tions of  long  periodic  sentences  with  paragraphs  of  ^  few  words, 
the  childish  and  pedantic  fondness  for  etymological  lore,  the 
profound  sayings  which  are  but  solemn  puns,*  the  far-fetched, 
extravagant  symbols,  f  Hello,  who  defined  Romanticism  as 
mysticism  minus  God,  was  himself  emphatically  a  Romanticist. 
He  had  started  a  paper — The  Crusader — which  was  to  renew 
the  attempt  of  Lamennais's  The  Future,  but  steering  clear  of 
heresy.  He  liked  Lacordaire's  spirit  and  style,  if  not  his 
philosophy ;  and  he  was  fond  of  reading  aloud  either  his  own 
prose  or  Victor  Hugo's,  which  he  sincerely  admired.  But  as  a 
Romanticist  he  had  not  the  variety  of  efi'ects  and  the  supreme 
mastery  of  style  that  Victor  Hugo  preserved  even  in  his  worst 
passages ;  he  had  not  Lamennais's  passionate  intensity  nor 
even  Lacordaire's  more  commonplace  but  effective  rhetoric. 
His  style,  says  M.  Aguettant,  gives  the  impression  of  an 
anthology  from  some  great  writer  with  the  undistinguished 
prose  of  his  editor  to  fill  the  gaps.  On  a  higher  plane  he  is 
almost  as  tantalising  and  as  discouraging  as  Strada. 

Hello's  influence  on  French  Catholicism  was  negligible.  On 
literature  his  action  is  traceable,  not  so  much  on  Villiers  de 
risle-Adam,  his  contemporary  and  a  Breton  like  himself,  as  on 

*  "There  is  Silence  in  Tacitus." 

t  "On  this  wood  was  nailed  the  Word  made  flesh.  The  body  was  raised 
vertically:  line  of  life.  The  arms  were  stretched  horizontally  :  line  of  death. 
Thus  was  symbolised  the  sacrifice  which  contains  life  and  death  reconciled  " 
{Philosophic  et  AthiHsme,  p.  328.  Cf.  the  extraordinary  symbols  used  by 
Victor  Hugo  in  La  Fin  de  Satan). 


68       FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

Leon  Bloy,  although  that  powerful,  eccentric  writer  is  as  wilfaliy 
brutal  as  Hello  was  noble.  Huj^smans  and  Maeterlinck,  espe- 
cially the  latter,  owe  much  of  their  fondness  for  literary  mysti- 
cism and  a  few  of  their  tricks  of  style  to  the  half-forgotten 
Pascal  of  Keroman.  That  he  should  ever  become  popular  is 
improbable ;  the  great  bulk  of  his  work  does  not  deserve  it  and 
the  golden  passages  cannot  appeal  to  the  crowd.  A  discreet, 
almost  secret,  but  pure  and  indestructible  fame,  like  that  of 
Alfred  de  Vigny,  will  not  be  his  either,  for  there  is  a  morbid 
element  in  his  genius  and  he  is  seldom  great  except  when  words 
fail  him.  He  will  remain,  a  weakling  touched  wath  genius,  in 
the  chiaroscuro  of  esoteric  glory. 

7.  Conclusion. 

We  have  attempted  to  show  to  what  materialising  influences 
French  Catholicism  was  submitted  under  the  Second  Empire — 
on  the  one  hand,  its  alliance  with  anti-socialistic  reaction,  on 
the  other,  the  question  of  the  Temporal  Power  of  the  Pope  ; 
how  the  development  of  Ultramontane  ideas,  long  favoured  by 
the  liberals  themselves,  had  made  the  Pope's  authority  more 
absolute  and  less  disputed  than  for  centuries  before  ;  how,  in 
Pius  IX.,  the  rigid  believer  and  the  frightened  temporal  sovereign 
agreed  in  a  doctrine  and  a  policy  of  opposition  to  modern  pro- 
gress. Several  attempts  were  made  to  resist  these  retrograde 
influences  :  all  failed. 

Montalembert  and  the  political  Liberal  group  tried  to  reconcile 
the  strictest  orthodoxy  and  the  most  rigorous  Church  discipline 
with  the  principles  of  constitutional  liberty  in  the  State. 
Opposed  by  the  absolutists,  they  were  openly  censured  by  Rome. 
Lacordaire,  Gratry,  Hyacinthe  Loyson,  orthodox  and  respectful 
sons  of  the  Church,  took  active  interest  in  all  modern  problems, 
and  their  generous  sympathy  went  to  freedom,  democracy,  peace. 
They  were  all  distrusted :  Lacordaire  died  obedient,  but  despair- 
ing ;  Gratry  was  blamed  and  driven  to  the  verge  of  rebellion ; 
Loyson  had  to  break  away  from  the  Roman  Church.  Maret, 
Gratry,  Hello,  attempted  to  bridge  the  chasm  between  the  Church 
and  contemporary  thought.     Maret  was  treated  as  an  enemy ; 


CATHOLICISM  69 

Gratry  was  applauded  when  he  criticised,  ignored  when  he 
sought  to  build  up ;  Hello  remained  unknown. 

Whilst  the  most  intelligent  members  of  the  old  aristocracy, 
conservative  and  cultured  men  like  Montalembert  and  de  Broglie, 
were  held  in  suspicion,  whilst  warm-hearted  orators  and  well- 
meaning  philosophers  were  neglected  or  censured,  a  journalist, 
powerful  and  admirably  sincere,  but  narrow,  violent,  and  vulgar, 
became  the  dictator  of  the  French  Church,  the  judge  of 
Academicians,  monks,  and  bishops. 

Hence  an  undeniable  lowering  in  the  character  of  French 
Catholicism,  a  recrudescence  of  materialistic  superstitions,  the 
uncritical  acceptance  of  doubtful  miracles,*  a  tone  of  bitter 
arrogance  in  controversy,  charity  sneered  at,  and  faith  reduced 
to  blind  obedience. 

It  is  not  strange,  therefore,  that  gradually  all  the  masters  of 
French  thought  should  have  passed  over  to  anti- clericalism.  The 
movement  began  with  the  condemnation  of  Lamennais  (1832)  ; 
it  was  partly  checked  by  the  success  of  Lacordaire's  lectures 
(1835)  ;  it  received  a  new  impetus  from  the  excessive  bitterness 
of  Montalembert's  attack  on  State  education  (1842-44)  ;  lulled 
again  in  the  early  days  of  the  Second  Republic,  it  became  irre- 
sistible after  1849.  Victor  Hugo,  Quinet,  Michelet,  Sainte- 
Beuve,  George  Sand,  Merimee,  Emile  Augier,  Leconte  de  Lisle 
were  violently  "anti-clerical";  and  if  the  new  generation, 
represented  by  Taine  and  Renan,  were  more  moderate  in  the 
expression  of  their  hostility,  it  was  out  of  self-confidence  rather 
than  hesitation :  they  thought  Science  was  already  supreme,  and 
could  afford  to  be  contemptuously  fair  to  her  fallen  rival. 

We  may  regret  such  a  development.  But  the  attitude  of  the 
Church  was  consistent  throughout ;  no  other  was  compatible 
with  her  principles,  claims,  and  conditions.  The  liberals  of 
all  descriptions  within  the  Church,  the  eclecticists  without, 
some  with  admirable  earnestness,  some  with  excessive  cleverness 
and  diplomacy,  attempted  many  compromises  :  all  were  spurned. 
Rome  would  admit  no  alternative  but  theocracy  and  free-thought : 
France  did  not  choose  theocracy. 

*  La  Salette  (1846),  Lourdes  (1858). 


CHAPTER  II 

PROTESTANTISM 

1.  The  Struggle  between  Orthodoxy  and  Liberalism. 

The  place  of  Protestantism  in  the  religious  life  of  nineteenth- 
century  France  is  singularly  hard  to  define.  We  do  not  accept 
the  extreme  opinion  of  the  Traditionalists,  who  maintain  that 
the  Protestants,  in  France,  are  an  alien  element,  more  in 
sympathy  with  foreign  countries  than  with  the  land  of  their 
birth.  French  Protestantism  has  its  roots  deep  in  the  national 
soil.  Was  not  Gerson  one  of  the  forerunners  of  the  Reforma- 
tion ?  Did  not  Lefebvre  d'Etaples  anticipate  Luther  ?  Is  not 
Calvin  French  through  and  through,  in  his  love  of  rigid  system 
as  in  his  mastery  of  the  vernacular  ?  Indeed,  Protestantism  is 
more  truly  national  than  present-day  Ultramontanism.  A 
"Nationalist"  party  submitting,  even  in  political  matters,  to 
the  dictates  of  a  foreign  potentate ;  a  "  Traditionalist "  and 
monarchical  school  of  thought  disclaiming  the  constant  tradition 
of  our  old  kings  and  clergy,  disowning  Louis  XIV.  and  Bossuet : 
such  a  school  and  such  a  party  have  no  authority  to  excommuni- 
cate the  descendants  of  the  Huguenots. 

Yet  the  French  Protestants  are  different.  They  feel  it 
themselves.  Catholics  and  Voltairians,  Romanticists  and 
Positivists  may  fight  bitterly :  they  cannot  ignore  each  other. 
While  they  oppose,  they  complete  one  another  :  they  are  part  of 
the  great  national  system.  The  Protestants  stand  by  them- 
selves. They  have  their  own  traditions,  their  own  sympathies. 
They  are  faithful  to  traditions  which  the  rest  of  the  country  has 
forgotten.  They  are  not,  strictly  speaking,  foreigners  :  they 
are  a  small  French  nation  within  the  great  nation. 

After  the  Edict  of  Nantes,  which  registered  the  failure  of 

70 


PROTESTANTISM  11 

Protestantism  in  France  as  a  national  movement,  the  Huguenots 
seemed  on  the  point  of  securing  a  semi-independent  political 
existence — with  their  privileges  and  their  cities  of  refuge. 
Richelieu  ruthlessly  shattered  their  hope.  The  policy  of 
Louis  XIV.,  culminating  in  the  Revocation,  made  it  impossible 
for  them  to  merge  in  the  general  body  of  French  citizens.  The 
concessions  of  Louis  XVI.,  the  complete  equality  proclaimed 
by  the  Revolution,  came  too  late.  The  Protestant  nation  was 
formed,  moulded  by  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  of  persecution  : 
too  strong  to  be  absorbed,  too  weak  to  play  a  prominent  part,  an 
obstinate  survival  rather  than  a  growing  force. 

Persecution,  at  least,  was  a  stern  monitor ;  it  saved  the  great 
moral  traditions  of  the  sect.  But  when  quieter  times  came  at 
last,  it  was  to  be  feared  that  Protestantism,  reduced  to  the 
position  of  a  small  historical  body,  not  fully  in  sympathy  with 
the  general  life  of  the  nation,  would  grow  narrow  and  slack,  and 
morally  degenerate.  Such  was  indeed  the  case  ;  there  had  been 
admirable  characters  among  the  ''  Ministers  of  the  Desert  "  in 
the  eighteenth  century  :  their  successors  were  too  often  indifferent 
and  commonplace.  After  the  official  recognition  of  the  Reformed 
Church  (1802),  the  Dean  of  the  newly-established  Divinity 
School  at  Montauban  was  obliged  to  say :  "  Our  soul,  0  Lord  ! 
is  afflicted  unto  death,  because  of  the  languid  and  wasted 
condition  of  Thy  Church."  * 

The  great  Revival  of  the  early  nineteenth  century  was  of 
foreign  origin.  It  did  not  begin  until  the  treaties  of  Vienna 
had  re-opened  France  to  English  influences.  Cook  and  other 
disciples  of  Wesley  evangelised  the  South  in  1818.  The 
movement  assumed  great  proportions,  but  it  remained  decidedly 
English  in  its  origin  and  character.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
revival  of  Biblical  studies,  marked  by  the  creation  of  the  Revieiv 
de  Strasbourg  in  1850,  was  a  belated  result  of  German  influence 
and  prospered  on  semi-Grerman  territory. 

French  Protestantism,  reduced  to  its  own  forces,  would  have 
gone  into  a  decline  ;  cosmopolitan  sympathies  saved  it.     Hence- 
forth,  the  Protestants   will   consider    Geneva,  Edinburgh,  The 
Hague,    Berlin,    as   their    religious    capitals.     Some    of    their 
•  Coignet,  Le  Protestantisvie  fraiK^ais  au  XlXdme  sUcle,  p.  36. 


72   FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

best  men  were  of  mixed  blood.  Scherer  was  of  Swiss,  English, 
and  Dutch  origins ;  the  Monods  have  passed  from  Switzerland 
to  Denmark,  and  have  connections  in  all  Protestant  lands. 
Athanase  Coquerel  was  born  at  Leyden,  of  Huguenot  and 
Covenanter  parentage.  All  spent  years  of  study  abroad.  The 
Protestant  nation  is  thus  more  cosmopolitan  than  the  rest  of 
the  French,  freer  from  prejudices,  freer  from  objectionable 
national  characteristics.  It  is,  on  the  whole,  probably  superior 
to  the  main  body — but  it  is  different. 

This  "  character  apart "  explains  why  so  many  great 
Protestant  names  leave  the  French  public  at  large  indifferent. 
The  Monods,  the  Coquerels,  the  R6villes,  the  Gasparins,  the 
Stapfers,  the  Sabatiers,  Reuss,  Colani,  Secretan,*  Laboulaye, 
Bungener,*  Passy,  Pelletan — Protestantism  may  well  be  proud  of 
such  a  list,  by  no  means  exhaustive,  of  preachers  and  historians, 
scholars  and  philosophers,  philanthropists  and  politicians.  Yet 
how  many  of  these  brilliant  men  were  genuinely  popular  ?  How 
many  secured  a  permanent  place  in  French  literature  ?  Scherer 
conquered  authority  rather  than  fame,  but  this  was  not  until  he 
had  abandoned  Protestantism  and  devoted  himself  to  literary 
criticism  and  political  journalism.  Guizot,  on  the  contrary,  took 
his  rank  as  a  historian  and  a  political  orator  long  before  he 
became  an  apologist.  His  Meditations  sur  la  Religion 
Chretienne,  as  Vitet  regretfully  remarks,  made  no  visible 
impression  on  the  French  public.  The  author  was  illustrious, 
the  book  was  heralded  by  the  influential  Revue  des  Deux 
MondeSy  religious  passions  were  at  their  height,  Kenan's  Life 
of  Jesus  was  the  "best  seller"  of  the  season:  yet  the  only 
result  of  Guizot's  efforts  was  "  the  conspiracy  of  silence." 
Quinet,  often  cited  as  one  of  the  most  famous  names  in 
nineteenth- century  Protestant  literature — Quinet  was  not  a 
Protestant. 

A  literature  is  the  flower  of  a  civilisation,  and  French 
civilisation  is  not  Protestant.  Rostand's  symbol  holds  true ; 
Chantecler  cannot  crow  unless  his  talons  be  firmly  planted  in 
the  native  earth,  unless  its  sap,  as  it  were,  rise  and  flow 
through  his  body. 

•  French  Swiss. 


PROTESTANTISM  73 

But  if  Protestantism  is  of  little  importance  in  the  general 
development  of  the  nation,  it  becomes  extremely  interesting 
when  studied  from  within.  For  the  very  reason  that  it  forms  a 
semi-independent  body  within  the  main  body,  it  is  a  perfect 
microcosm,  with  all  the  varied  aspirations,  the  conflicting 
passions,  the  party  feuds  of  the  greater  communities.  It  does 
not  form  a  solid  army,  opposed  to  the  armies  of  Catholicism  and 
Free-thought :  it  has  its  own  Catholicism  within  itself,  as  well  as 
its  own  free-thought.  It  does  not  take  any  well-defined  part  in 
the  general  conflict :  it  ofi'ers  a  separate  but  curiously  parallel 
reproduction  of  the  whole  conflict  on  a  smaller  scale. 

In  the  very  essence  of  Protestantism  we  find  this  eternal 
opposition  between  authority  and  liberty,  between  tradition  and 
reason.  This  inner  contradiction  has  never  been  solved  :  it  is 
doubtful  whether  it  ever  will  be.  If  the  principle  of  free 
personal  interpretation  is  followed  to  its  logical  end,  the  Church 
may  retain  spiritual  influence,  she  will  lose  all  spiritual 
authority.  She  may  offer  her  services  as  a  teacher  and  a  guide ; 
she  may  claim  to  express  the  opinion  of  the  wisest,  or  of  the 
majority ;  by  this  title  she  may  advise,  encourage,  rebuke  : 
she  can  no  longer  command.  No  interpretation  of  Scripture, 
however  obvious,  time-honoured,  and  universally  accepted,  can 
be  enforced;  no  interpretation,  however  fanciful  and  revolu- 
tionary, can  be  condemned :  the  very  notion  of  orthodoxy 
disappears,  or  rather  orthodoxy  is  reduced  to  one  dogma,  the 
Divine  inspiration  of  the  Bible.  The  individual  conscience 
recognises  no  master  but  the  Word  of  God. 

But,  if  the  authority  of  the  Church  be  ruined,  how  is  that  of 
the  Bible  to  stand  ?  The  Bible  is  a  collection  of  books :  how 
was  this  collection  made?  Why  are  certain  books  included 
which  do  not  claim  to  be  Divinely  inspired  ?  Why  are  others 
rejected  as  apocryphal?  By  whom,  when,  how,  was  the  text 
first  written  ?  How  was  it  transmitted  to  us  ?  All  these  ques- 
tions arise  invincibly.  Curiosity  is  inseparable  from  veneration. 
If  the  Bible  is  all-important  to  us,  we  must  know  everything 
about  it.  Biblical  criticism  is  the  sign,  not  of  scofliug 
incredulity,  but  of  reverence  and  faith.  If  we  find  that  fallible 
men  selected   these  books,  that  fallible  men  translated  them, 


74        FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

transcribed  them,  originally  wrote  them,  centuries  ago,  in  an 
imperfect  language,  for  an  uncivilised  people,  how  can  we 
believe  that  every  jot  and  tittle  of  the  book  is  Divine  ?  Are  we 
not  led  to  the  conclusion  :  **  The  Bible  is  not  the  Word  of  God, 
but  it  contains  the  Word  of  God  "  ? 

Thus  the  last  great  dogma  of  Protestantism  loses  its  absolute 
character.  If  the  Scriptures  are  not  literally  inspired,  how  are 
we  going  to  distinguish  between  what  is  the  Word  of  God  in 
them  and  what  is  purely  human  ?  The  only  test  will  be  the 
harmony  between  the  revelation  in  the  Book  and  the  revelation 
within  our  own  hearts.  We  shall  believe  only  what  we  feel  to 
be  true.  The  individual  conscience,  therefore,  has  not  only  the 
right  of  free  interpretation,  but  the  right  of  free  criticism.  Does 
not  this  mean  that  the  Bible  is  no  longer  the  final  authority  ? 
Emancipated  from  tradition  as  embodied  in  a  Church,  the  soul 
will  also  be  emancipated  from  tradition  as  embodied  in  a  book, 
and  in  the  words  of  F.  Buisson,  "  I'idole  de  papier  doit  suivre 
I'idole  de  chair." 

From  such  conclusions,  blasphemous  in  their  eyes,  many 
Protestants  shrank  with  horror.  We  cannot  tax  them  with 
being  illogical.  A  great  living  religion  is  not  an  abstract 
reasoning;  the  so-called  principle  of  Protestantism,  free  inter- 
pretation, is  not  the  whole,  nor  even  the  centre  of  Protestantism. 
The  authority  of  the  Bible  is  the  one  essential  dogma :  free 
interpretation  is  only  a  secondary  truth,  a  consequence,  which 
must  in  no  case  be  allowed  to  ruin  the  one  great  foundation  of 
the  faith.  In  other  words,  the  orthodox  are  Christians  before 
they  are  Protestants.  Christianity,  as  revealed  in  the  Bible,  is 
eternal  truth,  Protestantism  only  a  necessary  historical  develop- 
ment. For  the  Reformers  of  the  sixteenth  century  the  cry  for 
intellectual  freedom  was  not  the  most  pressing.  They  were 
impelled,  not  by  logic,  but  by  piety.  The  resistance  of  the 
Church  to  their  demands  for  reform  threw  them  into  opposition ; 
Liberalism,  the  doctrine  of  all  minorities — even  the  Catholic 
Church,  whenever  she  is  in  the  minority — became  their  weapon, 
but  it  was  not  their  end.  "We  claim  liberty  for  ourselves, 
because  we  are  right ;  we  deny  liberty  to  you,  because  you  are 
wrong."     This  way  of  reasoning,  faulty  though  it  seems  to  the 


PKOTESTANTISM  75 

dispassionate  critic,  is  irrefutable  in  the  eyes  of  the  believer  ; 
thus  the  same  Government  would  be  blamed  for  persecuting  a 
Christian  sect  and  praised  for  prosecuting  even  peaceable 
anarchists.  From  the  days  of  Luther  and  Calvin,  Protestantism 
has  had  a  double  aspect,  conservative  and  revolutionary,  the 
champion  of  liberty  without,  a  religion  of  authority  within. 
The  orthodox,  therefore,  are  not  untrue  to  the  tradition  of 
their  faith. 

This  faith  had  become  dearer  to  them  through  three  centuries 
of  struggle,  of  persecution,  of  perseverance.  No  man  would 
have  remained  a  Protestant  unless  the  great  dogmas  of 
Protestantism  were  vital  to  him.  If  he  believed  in  freedom  of 
thought  more  than  in  the  Bible,  the  ever-growing  party  of 
Rationalists  and  Voltairians  was  there  to  welcome  him.  But 
no :  he  clung  to  his  few  essential  dogmas  all  the  more 
tenaciously  because  they  were  so  few,  and  his  only  defence 
against  infidelity.  A  Catholic  has  all  the  resources  of  the 
Church  to  rely  upon :  a  Protestant  has  the  Bible  only.  If  he 
lets  that  go,  especially  in  a  country  where  free-thought  is 
powerful,  he  cannot  remain  a  Protestant. 

Thus  both  the  great  parties  within  French  Protestantism  have 
their  justification  in  tradition  and  in  reason.  A  constant 
struggle  between  them  is  inevitable ;  in  the  eyes  of  the  liberals, 
the  orthodox  are  but  illogical  Catholics,  and  for  the  orthodox, 
the  liberals  are  half-hearted  or  hypocritical  free-thinkers. 
This  war  is  bitter,  because  it  is  waged  by  earnest  men,  whose 
dearest  interests  in  this  life  and  in  the  life  to  come  are  at 
stake  ;  because  it  is  waged  within  a  narrow  field,  where  no 
blow  can  miss  its  aim  ;  because  it  is  a  fratricidal  war,  in  which 
treasures  of  love  are  turned  to  gall,  in  which  each  combatant 
suff'ers  as  much  from  the  wounds  he  inflicts  as  from  those 
he  receives. 

The  crisis  of  the  struggle  occurred  just  during  the  period  we 
are  studying,  from  1848  to  1872.  The  evolution  of  French 
Protestantism  remained  parallel  with  the  general  evolution  of 
the  country,  without  merging  into  it.  There  had  been  a 
Catholic  revival  in  the  early  years  of  the  century ;  there  was, 
a    little   later,    a   Protestant    revival,  mainly   under    Wesley  an 


76   FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

influences.  In  both  cases  the  resistance  of  the  Kationalists, 
the  disciples  of  eighteenth-century  philosophy,  had  to  be 
conquered ;  after  1848,  Protestantism,  like  Catholicism,  had  to 
face  a  more  formidable  enemy  than  mere  rationalism — the 
scientific  spirit.  Protestant  orthodoxy,  like  Catholic  orthodoxy, 
found  it  necessary  to  affirm  and  define  itself:  to  the  pro- 
clamation of  Papal  infallibility  of  1870  corresponds  the 
Declaration  of  Faith  of  1872. 

The  Kevival  had  not  been  essentially  an  ecclesiastical  or  a 
theological  movement ;  it  owed  its  success  to  its  appeal  to  the 
deepest  emotions,  as  well  as  to  its  practical  activities.  It  did 
not  rely  on  forms  and  formulae ;  indeed,  the  movement  was  not 
encouraged  at  first  by  the  conservative  Established  Church.  In 
its  policy,  in  its  methods,  the  Revival  seemed,  on  the  whole, 
liberal.  But,  without  any  desire  of  going  into  theological 
subtleties,  without  giving  any  prominence  to  intellectualism,  it 
laid  such  stress  on  the  dogma  of  the  Atonement,  and,  of  course, 
on  the  literal  inspiration  of  the  Bible,  that  it  re-opened  the  era 
of  theological  strife.  So  long  as  Protestantism  had  been,  first  of 
all,  a  tradition,  all  men  born  within  the  Church  could  accept 
its  tenets  unquestioningly,  whatever  their  own  intellectual 
tendencies  might  be  :  their  faith  was  part  of  their  inheritance, 
like  their  names  or  their  national  allegiance — something  to  be 
accepted  and  honoured  without  discussion.  When  the  faith 
was,  as  it  were,  vitalised  and  individualised,  when  it  was  made 
to  consist  in  the  personal,  unreserved  acceptance  of  one  dogma, 
a  schism  was  to  be  feared. 

The  Synods  of  1848  and  1849,  convened  with  the  aim  of 
preventing  such  a  schism,  could  not  restore  genuine  unity. 
In  1849,  Frederic  Monod  and  Agenor  de  Gasparin  founded  the 
Union  of  French  Evangelical  Churches,  on  the  basis  of  Revival 
theology.  These  Churches  were  independent  of  the  Establish- 
ment, which  they  considered  as  latitudinarian.  On  the  other 
hand,  in  July,  1850,  appeared  the  first  number  of  the  Revue  de 
Strasbourg,  devoted  to  the  reverent  but  fearless  investigation  of 
religious  truth.  The  task  was  difficult ;  until  about  1858,  with 
such  contributors  as  Colani,  Reuss,  Scherer,  the  Review  was  not 
unequal  to  it.     But  every  year  the  incompatibility  between  the 


PROTESTANTISM  77 

orthodox  and  the  scientific  points  of  view  was  appearing  more 
flagrant.  When  Scherer  practically  abandoned  historical 
Christianity  and  went  over  to  free-thought,  the  old  confidence 
and  enthusiasm  were  well-nigh  ruined.  Through  prodigies  of 
tolerance  and  diplomacy,  the  life  of  the  Review  was  prolonged 
until  December,  1869.  A  last  article  by  Colani  acknowledged 
in  veiled  terms  the  failure  of  this  noble  effort. 

Probably  the  most  typical  episode  of  the  struggle  was  the 
conflict  between  Athanase  Coquerel,  junior,  and  Guizot.  The 
two  causes  could  have  no  worthier  champions.  Coquerel  was 
a  brilliant  young  minister,  beloved  of  his  congregation.  His 
father  was  one  of  the  noblest  representatives  of  Liberalism, 
famous  alike  as  a  philanthropist,  a  preacher,  and  a  theologian ; 
in  1848,  Paris  had  elected  him  to  the  Constituent  Assembly. 
Guizot  was  the  illustrious  historian  and  statesman  who  for 
eight  years  had  seemed  the  actual  ruler  of  France.  Coquerel' s 
Liberalism  was  thoroughgoing  and  outspoken ;  he  did  not 
conceal  his  sympathy  with  Renan,  and  consented  to  serve  on  a 
committee  for  the  erection  of  a  statue  to  Voltaire  (1867).  In 
1864,  in  spite  of  the  support  of  his  congregation,  he  was  judged 
and  condemned  by  the  Presbyterial  Council,  in  which  Guizot 
took  a  leading  part.  This  decision  roused  great  opposition.  In 
the  following  presbyterial  elections,  Guizot,  in  spite  of  his  fame, 
authority,  and  undoubted  services,  was  elected  only  at  the 
second  ballot,  and  by  the  narrow  plurality  of  eight  votes.  He 
was  accused  of  assuming  the  role  of  a  Protestant  Pope.  For 
twelve  years,  until  after  Guizot's  death,  Coquerel  was  kept  out 
of  the  Establishment. 

It  was  Guizot  again  who,  in  spite  of  his  eighty-five  years,  was 
the  dominant  influence  in  the  Synod  of  1872,  for  which  he  had 
obtained  from  his  former  rival  Thiers,  then  President  of  the 
Republic,  the  necessary  governmental  permission.  This  Synod 
was  the  culmination  of  a  series  of  efforts  for  having  the 
Protestant  faith  authoritatively  defined,  both  dogmatically  and 
legally,  so  as  to  exclude  the  liberals  from  the  fold.  Such  a 
Synod  looks  for  all  the  world  like  a  miniature  Catholic  Council. 
The  Confession  of  Faith  which  it  adopted  may  seem  reasonable 
and  moderate  :  but  it  was  meant  to  be  the  test  of  orthodoxy ; 


78   FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

therefore  it  limited  the  Protestants'  birthright  of  personal 
interpretation.  For  the  liberals,  such  a  limitation  of  liberty 
was  equivalent  to  its  suppression.  The  aged  Pope  of  the 
Huguenots  triumphed ;  orthodoxy  carried  the  day  by  sixty-one 
votes  to  forty-five.  But  the  long-deferred  schism — secretly 
desired  by  members  of  both  parties — finally  took  place,  and  in 
spite  of  recent  efforts  it  seems  irremediable. 

2.  Guizot. 

With  Guizot  we  return  to  the  main  stream  of  French  life  and 
literature :  for  he  was  a  statesman  as  well  as  a  Church  leader, 
and  an  admirable  writer  as  well  as  a  thorough  scholar.  Indeed, 
there  are  few  lives  more  complete  than  his,  covering  as  it  did 
eighty-seven  years  under  the  twelve  political  regimes  that 
France  has  known  within  less  than  a  century.  He  reached  the 
summits  of  fame  and  power.  Journalist,  professor,  historian, 
administrator,  political  man,  Cabinet  Minister,  Premier,  he  was 
the  mainstay  of  a  dynasty,  for  seven  years  the  ruler  of  France 
under  King  Louis-Philippe,  and  one  of  the  masters  of  Europe. 
But  he  was  as  unpopular  as  he  was  admired  and  respected ;  as 
selfish  for  his  class  as  he  was  disinterested  for  himself;  as  blind 
to  the  state  of  the  country  at  large  as  he  was  clear-sighted  in 
his  bourgeois  Parliament ;  austere,  but  relying,  like  Walpole, 
on  political  conscience-jobbing;  high-minded,  but  flourishing 
before  the  electorate  the  motto:  "  Enrichissez-vous !  "  (Get 
rich ! ) ;  a  great  historian,  but  a  poor  prophet,  who  explained 
with  assumed  infallibility  the  progress  of  civilisation,  and,  not 
long  before  the  Revolution  of  1848,  declared  :  *'  The  day  of 
universal  suffrage  will  never  come  "  ;  a  great  intellect,  but  with 
blinkers  ;  a  great  heart,  but  outwardly  cold ;  a  great  leader  who 
wrecked  his  party  ;  a  great  Conservative,  who,  through  sheer 
blundering  and  obstinacy,  plunged  his  country  into  a  revolution. 

Such  was  F.  Guizot  at  sixty-three,  on  the  morrow  of  the 
upheaval  which  had  overthrown  him,  and  the  dynasty  he  served, 
and  the  class  he  represented.  Then  perhaps  more  than  ever,  the 
true  greatness  of  the  man  revealed  itself.  Exiled  from  politics, 
universally  unpopular,  by  no  means  wealthy,  the  old  athlete  did 
not  lose  his  courage,   nor  even  his   serenity.     Three  purposes 


PROTESTANTISM  79 

were  to  fill  his  life,  each  sufficient  to  engross  the  energy  of  a 
younger  man.  He  would  complete  his  History  of  the  Rebellion, 
the  Protectorate  and  the  Restoration^  commenced  twenty  and 
thirty  years  before — and  the  new  volumes  are  fresher,  more 
brilliant  than  the  old.  He  would  write  the  Memoirs  of  Jiis  oivn 
Times,  a  calm  and  lofty  defence  of  his  political  career.  And  to 
crown  all  his  labours,  he  would  undertake  a  great  apology  of  the 
Christian  faith. 

This  apology  was  no  new  idea  with  him,  but  the  dream  of  his 
early  manhood  realised  in  old  age,  after  the  storms  of  an  eventful 
life.  Undoubtedly  the  conditions  under  the  Second  Empire,  the 
intense  interest  in  religious  questions,  the  renewed  attacks 
against  Christianity,  the  universal  conflict  between  conservation 
and  revolution,  impelled  him  and  helped  him.  But  he  was 
following,  first  of  all,  the  logic  of  his  own  destiny. 

Guizot  was  of  old  Protestant  stock.  He  was  born  at  Nimes 
two  months  before  the  exceptional  regime  imposed  upon  the 
Protestants  was  abolished  by  Louis  XVI.  His  education,  he 
tells  us,*  was  Christian,  pervaded  with  earnest  sentiment,  but 
vague  from  the  dogmatic  point  of  view.  From  the  South  of 
France  he  went  to  Geneva,  after  the  death  of  his  father,  a  victim 
of  the  Terror.  He  found  there  another  kind  of  Protestantism, 
based  on  institutions,  practices,  and  traditions  rather  than  on 
strong  feelings  or  precise  beliefs.  In  Geneva,  the  eighteenth 
century  had  enervated  the  sixteenth  :  Rousseau's  spirit  was 
there  as  well  as  Calvin's.  In  Paris,  his  Protestantism,  already 
more  philosophical  than  religious,  was  in  danger  of  "evaporat- 
ing," when,  strangely  enough,  the  most  dangerous  chapters  in 
Gibbon,  which  lie  read  with  a  view  to  editing  them,  shook  his 
Rationalism.  The  growth  and  spread  of  Christianity,  as  reported 
by  the  infidel  historian,  seemed  to  him  miraculous  (1812). 
Later  on,  his  studies  and  his  political  opinions  brought  him  into 
close  touch  with  the  history  of  the  great  liberal  countries, 
England,  Holland,  the  United  States  ;  he  could  not  fail  to  see 
the  part  played  by  Christianity,  under  its  Protestant  form,  in  the 
development  of  these  nations  and  in  the  finn  establishment  of 
true  liberty. 

•  Revue  des  Detu  Mondes,  September  1,  1869,  p.  27. 


80   FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

According  to  Guizot,  therefore,  it  was  mainly  the  study  of 
history  that  brought  him  back  to  Protestantism  and  confirmed 
him  in  it.  His  religion  was  certainly  not  part  of  his  historical 
system,  which,  in  its  turn,  was  not  consciously  subordinated  to 
his  political  opinions  ;  but  such  rigid  unity  prevailed  in  Guizot' s 
life  that  these  three  independent  lines  of  thought  were  strictly 
parallel.  In  religion  as  in  politics  he  was  a  traditional  liberal ; 
in  other  words,  he  believed  in  liberty,  but  only  within  the  limits 
of  an  authoritative  document — the  Bible  and  the  Charter. 
History  and  apologetics,  in  his  hands,  consisted  in  reconciling 
authority  and  liberty,  by  proving  the  reasonableness  of  the 
documents  which  define  and  guarantee  liberty,  or,  to  use  a 
favourite  expression  of  his,  by  expounding  their  philosophy. 

The  three  series  of  his  Meditations  on  the  Christian  religion  are 
such  a  demonstration.  They  are  purely  intellectual,  theoretical. 
Guizot  does  not  insist  on  the  practical  side  of  religion.  No 
doctrine,  he  says,  can  rest  safely  on  the  basis  of  mere  usefulness. 
The  question  is  not  one  of  efficiency,  but  one  of  truth.  Nor  is 
he  satisfied  with  the  sentimental  adhesion  to  the  moral  teaching 
of  Christ :  "  [Some  maintain]  that  this  moral  teaching  is 
sufficient,  and  indeed  is  the  whole  Gospel.  They  disregard 
absolutely  the  bond  which  unites,  in  man,  thought  with  feeling 
*'  and  belief  with  action.  Man  is  greater  and  requires  more  than 
these  shallow  moralists  claim  for  him,  and  in  the  deep  instinct 
of  his  soul,  the  law  of  his  life  is  necessarily  connected  with  the 
secret  of  his  destiny.  Christian  dogma  alone  imparts  to 
Christian  morals  the  sovereign  authority  needed  for  governing 
and  regenerating  mankind."*  In  religion  even  more  than  in 
politics,  Guizot  was  a  thoroughgoing  doctrinaire. 

His  reasoning  can  be  summed  up  in  the  following  terms  :  There 
are  for  us  eternal  and  universal  problems,  such  as  the  origin  and 
destiny  of  man  and  of  the  world,  liberty  and  providence,  evil  and 
salvation.  These  problems  philosophy  cannot  solve  ;  Christianity 
alone  ofi'ers  a  solution. 

Of  the  impotence  of  philosophy  Guizot  gives  us  two  different 
proofs.  The  first  is  derived  from  history :  all  possible  systems 
have  been  tried.  They  can  all  be  reduced  to  four — sensualism 
*  Meditations  sur  VEssence  de  la  Eeligion  ChrHienne,  1864,  p.  286. 


PROTESTANTISM  81 

and  idealism,  scepticism  and  mysticism  ;  and  their  eternal  conflict 
shows  that  none  is  absolute  and  final.  All  the  great  systems  of 
the  present  day — spiritualism,  rationalism,  positivism,  pantheism, 
materialism,  scepticism — are  examined  and  found  wanting.  The 
second  proof  is  logical :  philosophy  is  purely  human,  and  cannot 
reach  beyond  the  limits  of  human  nature.  Guizot  is  as  decided 
as  Littre  or  Spencer  on  the  impossibility  for  the  unaided  human 
mind  to  transcend  the  bounds  of  science. 

All  metaphysical  systems  being  thus  rejected,  Guizot  proceeds 
to  expose  the  essentials  of  Christianity,  which,  according  to  him, 
are  contained  in  only  five  dogmas  :  creation,  Divine  providence,  ^ 
original  sin,  the  Incarnation  and  Redemption.  Creation  remains 
the  only  explanation  of  the  existence  of  the  world,  "  spontaneous 
generation  and  the  transformation  of  species  being  arbitrary 
hypotheses,  rejected  by  science  itself."  Providence  is  proved 
by  the  universal  instinct  of  prayer.  Original  sin  and  its  trans- 
mission is  a  doctrine  in  harmony  with  human  experience,  and 
solves  the  otherwise  baffling  problem  of  the  origin  of  evil.  The 
Incarnation  is  possible,  for  all  religions  have  held  such  a  belief, 
and  "  was  not  the  creation  of  man  himself  an  incarnation  ?  "  It 
is  true,  for  the  revolution  made  by  Jesus  is  absolutely  difi'erent 
from  that  made  by  any  man.  As  for  the  Redemption,  it  is  reason- 
able, for  the  belief  in  the  saving  virtue  of  voluntary  sacrifice 
is  also  universal. 

Such  is  the  logical  structure  of  the  apology.  Without  dis- 
cussing in  detail  the  selection  of  the  five  essential  dogmas  and 
of  the  proofs  he  adduces  in  favour  of  each,  we  have  to  face  one 
great  difficulty :  Guizot  exalts  religion  on  the  ruins  of  philo- 
sophy, and  his  religion  is,  to  all  appearances,  a  philosophy.  ^ 
Every  logical  demonstration  of  Christianity  will  be  open  to  this 
objection:  if  Christianity  can  be  proved  to  be  "reasonable,"  it 
becomes  a  metaphysical  system  like  the  others,  and  can  be 
ruined  by  the  same  arguments.  So,  in  his  answer  to  Janet's  criti- 
cism, Guizot  was  obliged  to  abandon  all  his  logical  apparatus. 
"  Christianity  may  be  put  in  philosophical  form,"  he  said, 
**  but  it  is  not  a  philosophy  ;  it  is  not  an  attempt  at  the  dis- 
covery of  truth,  it  is  truth  itself;  its  dogmas  are  not  theories, 
hypotheses,  they  are  facts."     How  can  these  trenchant  affirma- 

6 


82   FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

tions  be  substantiated  ?  By  the  further  assertion  that  Chris- 
tianity is  not  a  system,  but  a  history — the  history  of  the 
relations  of  God  with  mankind.  "  The  miracles  take  naturally 
their  place  in  such  a  history."*  The  whole  question  is  there- 
fore whether  this  history  is  true. 

Guizot,  of  course,  did  not  doubt  its  truth  ;  no  man  would 
doubt  it,  he  affirms,  if  he  were  not  biased  by  the  rationalistic 
prejudice  against  miracles.  If  miracles  were  once  frankly 
accepted  as  possible,  as  undoubtedly  they  are,  the  Bible  would 
offer  no  difficulty.  But  is  this  assertion  perfectly  safe  ?  First 
of  all,  if  we  brush  aside  the  rationalistic  objection  to  miracles, 
should  we  limit  ourselves  to  Biblical  miracles,  or  should  we 
accept  all  miracles  indiscriminately,  wherever  they  happen  to  be 
reported  ?  Are  not  later  miracles,  in  the  Catholic  Church  for 
instance,  at  least  as  well  authenticated  as  those  of  Judea  ?  To 
maintain  that  Biblical  miracles  alone  should  be  given  credence, 
because  the  Bible  alone  is  a  miraculous  book,  is  simply  begging 
the  question.  Besides,  are  there  not  other  difficulties?  Are 
there  not  discrepancies,  contradictions,  material  impossibilities 
of  a  non-miraculous  character?  Guizot's  demonstration  was 
luminous  for  those  who  accepted  blindly  his  conclusions  from 
the  outset. 

This  apology,  it  will  readily  be  noticed,  is  not  specifically 
Protestant.  Guizot  considered  as  essential  only  the  dogmas 
which  are  common  to  all  great  historical  Churches.  The  purely 
Catholic  dogmas,  like  transubstantiation  or  the  remission  of 
sins,  he  does  not  deny  or  dispute,  but  simply  ignores.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  his  demonstration,  based  on  authority  and  history, 
is  rather  Catholic  than  Protestant ;  there  is  no  touch  of  indivi- 
dualism in  it.  Without  ever  being  tempted  to  abandon  the  Church 
of  his  birth,  Guizot  drew  gradually  closer  to  Catholicism.  He 
hoped,  not  for  a  reunion,  but  for  a  reconciliation  of  the  Churches. 
For  the  Catholics,  not  only  for  the  most  liberal  among  them, 
but  for  the  Pope  himself,  he  had  nothing  but  words  of  sympathy 
and  respect.  He  reserved  all  his  power  of  denunciation  for  the 
liberal  Protestant.  "No  compromise  with  heresy,"  he  said  in 
the  case  of  Coquerel.  *'  The  Council  of  the  Church  must  be  the 
*  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  September  1,  1869. 


PROTESTANTISM  83 

defender  of  the  souls  of  Coquerel's  flock,  and  decide  for  them  the 
supreme  question  of  faith  and  life"  (February,  1864).  This 
rigid  ecclesiastical  doctrine,  disregarding  the  rights  of  private 
interpretation,  is  essentially  Catholic. 

Yet  Guizot  was  mistaken  if  he  hoped  for  a  genuine  reconcilia- 
tion of  the  conservative  Churches.  In  the  eyes  of  orthodox 
Catholics  he  remained  a  heretic.  When  he  denounced  the 
daring  and  dangerous  innovations  of  the  liberals,  the  Romanists 
could  tell  him :  *'  Bossuet  foresaw  your  predicament  two  cen- 
turies ago.  There  is  no  orthodoxy  without  a  Church  to  define 
and  enforce  it ;  there  is  no  Church  but  the  historical  Church  of 
Rome  ;  all  others  are  schismatic  or  heretical.  Authority  cannot 
compromise  with  free- thought." 

In  religion,  as  well  as  in  politics,  Guizot  attempted  an  impos- 
sible task  ;  he  believed  in  limited  revolutions.  He  thought  the 
flood-gates  could  be  left  ajar  for  a  moment  and  then  closed  more 
stanchly  than  before.  With  his  inborn  faith  in  conservatism 
and  authority  he  ought  to  have  been  a  Catholic  and  a  Legitimist. 
The  irony  of  fate  would  have  it  that  the  King  he  served  reigned 
by  the  divine  right  of  the  barricades,  that  the  Church  of  his 
allegiance  rested  originally  on  a  revolt  of  the  individual  con- 
science. He  would  have  stopped  religious  evolution  about  the 
middle  of  the  sixteenth  century,  political  evolution  about  1830 ; 
but  who  can  say  to  the  progress  of  human  thought,  "  So  far 
shalt  thou  go  and  no  farther  "  ?  Thus  his  political  life  ended  in 
disaster,  his  religious  life  in  a  victory  more  bitter  than  many 
defeats.  But  although  he  was  in  all  things  an  obstacle  rather 
than  a  guide,  we  cannot  help  admiring  Guizot,  his  untiring 
activity,  his  indomitable  will,  his  loftiness  of  purpose,  his  devo- 
tion to  the  ideal,  and  even  his  unshakable  belief  in  his  own 
infallibility. 

3.  Seller er. 

The  life  of  Guizot  has  the  majesty  of  immobility — his  mind 
grew,  his  character  developed,  but  like  a  tree,  which  adds  each 
year  a  new  ring  to  its  immovable  core  and  strikes  deeper  roots 
into  its  native  soil.  The  career  of  Scherer  has  the  dramatic 
interest  of  evolution  :  he  moved  slowly,  cautiously,  reluctantly, 


♦  *• 


84   FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

without  missing  a  single  step,  without  retracing  any,  from 
strictest  orthodoxy  to  absolute  free-thought.  In  these  two 
earnest  and  consistent  lives  we  find  exemplified  the  two  main 
principles  of  Protestantism  :  authority  and  libertj^,  the  Divine 
inspiration  of  the  Bible  and  the  rights  of  the  individual 
conscience. 

Scherer,  like  Guizot,  was  born  of  Protestant  parents.  But 
Guizot  was  of  pure  French  Huguenot  descent ;  Scherer' s  family 
connections  were  cosmopolitan.  Guizot  spent  his  youth  in  his 
native  South  or  in  Geneva  ;  Scherer  was  educated  in  Paris,  and 
attended  the  courses  of  a  State  institution.  These  differences 
alone  would  explain  why  Guizot 's  faith,  although  it  did  not 
retain  at  all  times  the  same  degree  of  ardour,  never  knew  any 
life-and-death  crisis,  whereas  Scherer's,  exposed  earlier  and  to 
more  dangerous  influences,  had  already  waxed  and  waned,  suc- 
cumbed and  triumphed,  when  he  was  only  fourteen.  At  sixteen, 
in  1831,  he  was  sent  to  Monmouth,  England,  "  as  an  heroic 
remedy  for  his  state  of  listlessness,  discouragement,  and 
despair."  The  remedy  proved  successful.  The  influence  of 
his  host,  Rev.  Thomas  Loader,  transformed  the  shiftless  boy 
into  a  hard-working  Christian  man.  In  1832  he  was  able  to 
write  in  his  diary  :  "Christmas:  conversion."  His  Protestant- 
ism, therefore,  was  not  merely  a  heritage,  but  a  new  conquest  ; 
and  the  faith  he  adopted,  on  the  eve  of  manhood,  was  not  the 
somewhat  formal  system  of  eighteenth-century  theology,  but  the 
purest  doctrine  of  the  Revival.  "  Yes,"  he  wrote  in  his  Common- 
place Book,  "justification  by  faith  is  the  way  of  salvation  ;  it  is 
the  means  which  God  has  used  to  bring  man  to  sanctification, 
which  is  his  end." 

His  vocation  for  the  ministry  became  unconquerable.  He 
took  a  theological  course  at  the  University  of  Strasbourg,  under 
the  direction  of  Ed.  Reuss,  a  great  scholar,  a  man  of  sterling 
character,  impartial  and  bold,  to  whom  Renan  has  paid  many 
a  well-deserved  tribute.  But  whilst  he  profited  by  the 
scrupulous  method  of  his  teacher,  Scherer  was  more  uncom- 
promising than  he  in  his  orthodoxy,  and,  rather  than  the 
scientific  liberalism  of  Reuss,  he  held  the  doctrine  of  Gaussen 
on   the   plenary   inspiration   of  the    Scriptures.     The   seventh 


PROTESTANTISM  85 

proposition  of  his  thesis  for  the  theological  licence  was  :  **  That 
all  inspiration  is  necessarily  literal  "  (1841). 

In  1845  he  hecame  a  Professor  in  the  Oratoire,  or  Free 
Divinity  School,  of  Geneva.  This  school  had  been  founded 
in  1831,  under  the  influence  of  the  Revival,  in  order  to  defend 
the  doctrine  of  plenary  inspiration,  and  Calvinistic  theology  in 
all  its  strictness,  against  the  relaxed  teaching  of  the  State 
Faculty.  It  had  for  its  president  the  well-known  historian 
Merle  d'Aubigne.  Scherer's  orthodoxy  was  entire.  He  refused 
to  himself  the  right  of  choosing  passages  in  the  Bible  as  more 
evidently  inspired  than  others:  "You  believe  that  such  or  such 
a  passage  is  divine  ?  But  then  it  is  not  God  you  believe  in,  it 
is  yourself.  One  does  not  accept  fully  an  authority  which  one 
could  have  refused  to  recognise."  His  faith  was  too  absolute 
to  be  afraid  of  the  truth  in  any  form,  and  he  would  begin  his 
lectures  with  the  invocation  :  "  0  God  !  Thou  art  the  God  of 
truth.  We  are  seeking  truth.  Thou  alone  canst  make  it 
known  unto  us.  Amen."  He  was  at  the  same  time  too  clear- 
sighted not  to  understand  the  dangers  of  this  search  for  truth. 
"  The  apprenticeship  of  a  theological  student  is  hard.  The 
uncertainty  into  which  his  mind  is  thrown  about  so  many 
things  which  seemed  to  him  simple  and  certain  before,  is  a 
source  of  cruel  agitation.  ...  It  is  a  situation  from  which  one 
cannot  come  out  victoriously  without  prayer  and  tears."  *  Up 
to  that  time  (1848),  after  a  few  years  of  boyish  fermentation, 
Scherer's  life  had  been  one  of  admirable  unity,  of  single  devotion 
to  truth,  of  unhesitating  belief  in  the  source  of  all  truth,  the 
Christian  religion ;  then  began  a  soul's  tragedy,  quieter  than 
Jouffroy's,  but  no  less  harrowing  in  its  unobtrusive,  relentless, 
and  slow  development. 

He  was  professor  of  Biblical  exegesis :  problems  arose  in  his 
mind  which  he  could  not  solve,  doubts  which  he  could  not  allay. 
Tortured  by  doubt,  he  sought  God's  support  in  prayer — and  it  is 
perhaps  the  noblest  trait  in  his  life  that  he  did  not  pray  for 
peace,  but  for  truth :  "0  God  !  grant  me  to  be  true — true 
especially  as  to  Thee,  true  in  Thy  service,  for  that  is  the 
primal  truth,  from  which  all  other  truths  are  derived.  .  .  ."  f 
♦  Gr^ard,  ScJierer,  72.  t  August  15,  1848. 


86       FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

"  Give  me  truth,  0  God  !  so  that  I  may  be  all  light,  without 
any  mixture  of  darkness  and  of  error ;  give  me  sincerity,  so  that 
I  may  let  the  truth  I  know  be  manifested  without  any  veil  of 
reticence.  Let  my  heart  within  me  be  like  the  heart  of  a 
newly-weaned  child  !  "  *  The  first  stage  of  the  struggle  lasted 
nearly  two  years.  On  December  28,  1849,  in  closing  his 
lecture,  he  announced  that  it  would  be  his  last  in  the  Oratoire. 

Scherer,  even  then,  remained  orthodox  in  all  his  views,  except 
on  the  doctrine  of  literal  inspiration.  But  he  saw  clearly  that 
this  doctrine  involved  the  whole  question  of  authority  in  religion. 
When  he  sent  his  resignation  to  the  Director  of  the  Oratoire, 
Scherer  passed  over  from  the  conservative  to  the  liberal  side  of 
Protestantism. 

Here  we  cannot  help  thinking  of  Kenan's  case,  so  strangely 
similar  to  Scherer's.  Renan,  like  Scherer,  moved  by  scientific 
scruples,  had  to  give  up  his  belief  in  literal  inspiration.  But, 
brought  up  in  a  Church  based  entirely  on  tradition  and  authority, 
he  passed  almost  immediately,  with  hardly  any  apparent  struggle, 
from  orthodoxy  to  scientific  independence.  If  you  remove  a 
single  stone,  the  whole  edifice  of  Roman  Catholic  theology 
collapses  irremediably.  The  inner  contradiction  of  Protestant- 
ism, in  such  a  case,  is  a  source  of  strength :  the  two  principles, 
authority  and  liberty,  are  able  to  combine  in  a  thousand  difi*erent 
ways  and  proportions ;  it  is  possible  to  cover  almost  the  whole 
range  of  human  thought  without  completely  losing  touch  with 
Protestantism.  Renan 's  evolution  was  complete  in  a  few 
months;    Scherer's  took  twelve  years. t 

After  breaking  with  the  Oratoire,  Scherer  remained  in  Geneva 
for  ten  more  years,  a  theologian  and  a  Protestant  still.  For- 
merly the  hope  of  the  stanchest  conservatives,  he  became  one 
of  the  leaders  of  the  liberals.  He  found  himself  in  harmony 
with  the  newly-established  Revue  de  Strasbourg ;  he  opened  a 

*  Gr^ard,  ScJierer,  p.  87. 

f  The  Protestant  faith  dies  harder  than  the  Catholic,  being  at  the  same 
time  simpler  and  less  consistent ;  on  the  other  hand,  ecclesiastical  habits 
survive  the  loss  of  the  Catholic  faith  much  longer  than  that  of  the  Pro- 
testant. Renan  became  a  radical  free-thinker  much  more  rapidly  than 
Scherer,  but  he  remained  a  priest  at  heart  all  his  life,  whilst  Soberer  soon 
ceased  to  be  in  any  way  a  minister. 


PROTESTANTISM  87 

private  course  which,  in  spite  of  violent  opposition,  attracted 
large  and  appreciative  audiences.  Excommunicated,  ostracised, 
saddened,  but  not  embittered,  he  defended  his  faith  inch  by  inch. 

He  defended  it  against  his  opponents  who  doubted  it,  but 
chiefly  against  the  logic  of  his  own  thought,  which,  relentlessly, 
was  biting  into  his  old  beliefs.  For  the  doctrine  of  authority, 
which  he  had  to  abandon,  he  tried  to  substitute  that  of  the  inner 
feeling,  the  harmony  between  the  revelation  in  the  Book  and  the 
revelation  within  our  hearts.  "  It  is  to  the  soul  that  the  whole 
Gospel  is  addressed,  it  is  by  its  essential  affinity  with  the  soul 
that  it  establishes  its  claims."  *  But  all  the  books  in  the  Bible, 
all  the  chapters,  all  the  verses,  do  not  appeal  equally  to  our 
souls ;  some  non-Biblical  writings  possess  the  character  of 
spirituality  to  a  higher  degi'ee  than  some  of  the  sacred  books ; 
there  is  more  "inspiration"  in  the  Imitation  than  in 
Chronicles.  "  To  limit  the  Spirit  of  God  to  the  Bible,  to 
deny  the  identity  of  the  Spirit  of  the  Bible  with  the  Spirit  of 
the  Saints  in  all  centuries,  is  a  crime  against  that  very  Spirit 
and  a  lie  of  theology  against  faith."  The  canon  of  the  Bible  is 
merely  the  classical  literature  of  our  religion,  but  the  Bible  is 
neither  totally  nor  exclusively  inspired. 

When  he  reached  this  point  (1854)  Scherer  could  affirm  that 
"  the  destiny  of  the  Bible  and  the  destiny  of  holiness  on  earth 
are  indissolubly  bound  together,"  but  he  was  no  longer,  in  any 
definite  sense  of  the  term,  a  Protestant.  What  he  was  he 
himself  did  not  know  :  but  he  suffered.  '*  I  am  not  made, 
I  feel  it,  for  a  time  of  universal  transformation  like  ours ;  my 
sympathies  are  with  the  past,  and  yet  human  affairs  are  carried 
along  by  a  current  against  which  we  cannot  go.  Thus  I  see 
myself  borne  by  the  convictions  of  my  intellect  towards  a  future 
which  inspires  me  neither  with  interest  nor  with  confidence."! 
And  he  wrote  about  Bishop  Colenso  pages  in  which  rings  the 
accent  of  a  personal  confession  :  "  Some  of  the  men  who  have 
most  openly  broken  with  the  tradition,  started  with  the  most 
childlike,  implicit,  obstinate  faith.  They  did  not  doubt  in 
order  to  get  rid  of  a  doctrine,  the  holiness  of  which  weighed 

*  Mdajiges  de  Critique  Religieusc,  p.  29. 
I  Conversationi  th^ologiques ,  1857. 


88   FEEXCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

upon  them  ;  they  did  not  deny  it  because  it  was  their  interest 
so  to  do ;  it  was  in  spite  of  themselres  that  their  faith  left  them. 
Far  from  seeking  out  objections,  they  have  recognised  their 
weight  with  reluctance.  They  yielded  to  evidence.  Their 
souls,  when  they  saw  for  the  first  time  the  abyss  gaping 
before  them,  were  seized  with  immense  and  grievous  terror; 
they  cast  themselves  on  their  knees,  they  struggled  with  tears, 
they  tried  all  remedies,  had  recourse  to  all  advisers.  Feeling 
the  thoughts  that  had  been  their  joy  and  their  strength  escape 
from  them,  realising  the  worth  of  all  that  was  about  to  fail 
them,  not  conceiving  that  anything  could  ever  fill  the  vacant 
place,  accustomed  to  considering  dogma  as  the  food  of  spiritual 
life  and  the  only  safeguard  of  human  virtue,  it  seemed  to  them 
that  they  were  going  to  fall  endlessly  into  abysmal  darkness. 
Twenty  times  they  resolved  to  doubt  their  doubts,  they  decided 
to  close  their  eyes  to  this  hateful  light,  they  made  deliberate 
efi'orts  to  believe — and  ever  they  found  themselves  confronted 
with  the  absolute  empire  that  Truth  holds  on  honest  minds. 
Xay,  we  have  here  something  more  than  the  mere  ascendancy 
of  evidence.  If  the  most  fervent  believers,  if  saints  themselves 
doubt  at  present,  it  is  not  on  account  of  the  seduction  of 
speculative  ideas,  it  is  not  even  on  account  of  the  power  with 
which  several  results  of  modem  criticism  impose  themselves 
upon  us  :  it  is  chiefly  through  the  need  of  remaining  consistent 
with  themselves :  accustomed  to  listening  to  their  conscience, 
they  could  not  resist  it.  Sincerity  is  for  them  such  a  high 
and  sacred  virtue  that  even  their  faith  has  to  be  sacrificed 
to  it.  The  conflict  in  which  they  are  engaged  is  a  conflict  of 
morality  with  dogma,  of  uprightness  of  character  with  loyalty 
to  the  flag.  In  a  word,  if  the  essence  of  religion  be  Justice 
and  Truth,  we  may  say  that  these  men  are  led  to  unbelief 
throuorh  devotion  to  relicnon  itself.  Such  is  the  contradic- 
tion  under  which  many  souls  are  groaning  at  present !  Such 
is  the  truly  tragic  spectacle  witnessed  by  the  nineteenth 
century."* 

After  passing  from  theology  to  metaphysics,  from  metaphysics 
to  natural  science  (without  mentioning  Comte,  Scherer  seems 

*  Lei  Confesriom  d'un  MLtHanHaire,  1S63. 


PROTESTANTISM  89 

to  accept  the  law  of  the  three  states),  would  the  human  soul 
complete  the  cycle,  and,  harrowed  by  conflicts,  revolutions,  and 
catastrophes,  return  from  materialism  to  faith  again?  In  1857, 
he  expressed  such  a  hope  ;  but  could  it  well  be  termed  a  hope  ? 
For  he  expected  that  mankind  would  begin  again  the  weary 
round — endless  motion  without  progress. 

His  final  philosophy,  if  by  such  a  name  may  be  called  the 
negation  of  all  philosophy,  was  universal  relativism,  in  which 
he  found,   not  joy,   but   precarious  rest   and   a   sort   of  weary 
peace.     "  The  edifice  of  the  ancient  world  rested  on  the  belief 
in  the  Absolute.     Keligion,  politics,   morals,  literature,  every- 
thing bore  the  mark  of  this  notion.     There  was  then  neither 
doubt  in  the  minds  nor  hesitation  in  the  acts  :  every  one  knew 
how  to  decide.     One  knew  of  two  causes  only  in  the  world, 
God's  and  the  Devil's  ;    of  two  camps  among  men,  the  good 
and  the  wicked ;  of  two  places  in  eternity,  on  the  right  hand 
and  on  the  left  of  the  Judge.     Truth  was  all  on  one  side,  error 
all  on  the  other.     To-day,   nothing  for  us  is  truth  or  error : 
we  must  find  other  words.     We  see  everywhere  nothing  but 
shades  and  degrees.     We  admit  even  the  identity  of  contraries. 
We    no    longer    know    religion,    but    religions ;     ethics,    but 
customs  ;    principles,   but  facts.     We  explain    everything,  and 
as  it  has  been  said,  the  intellect  approves  in  the  end  whatever 
it   is   able   to   explain.     Modern   virtue   is    all   summed   up  in 
toleration,  that  is  to  say  in  a  disposition  which  our  ancestors 
would  have  considered  as  the  worst  sign  of  weakness  or  treason. 
As  for  me,   I  confess,   I  cannot  consider  this  revolution,   the 
ancient  world   that   one  word   has  ruined,  so  many  wandering 
souls,  so  many  uprooted  beliefs,  so  much  darkness  and  sadness 
in  our  hearts,  the  end  of  so  many  strong  and  noble  things — 
I  cannot  think  of  all  that  without  being  reminded  of  the  Voice 
which  sounded  over  the  seas  of  old,  and  told  mankind  in  dismay 
that    'Great   Pan   was   dead.'     'At   which    cry,'    relates   Pan- 
tagruel,  '  all  were  struck  with  terror ;  and  the  last  word  was  not 
ended    but    great    sighs   were   heard,    great   lamentations    and 
terrors  on  earth,  not  of  one  person,  but  of  many.'     Yes,  the 
Voice  has  sounded   again   through   space,  announcing   the  end 
of    another    age    and    the   last    breath    of    another   God :    the 


90   FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

Absolute  is  dead  within  our  souls :  who  shall  raise  it  to  life 
again  ?  "  * 

There  is  despair  in  these  eloquent  lines,  the  despair  of  Yigny, 
Proudhon,  Leconte  de  Lisle;  and  the  "cry  of  agony"  of 
Madame  Ackermann  rings  like  an  echo  of  Scherer's.  He  had 
staked  his  all  on  the  pursuit  of  truth  :  "  Life  was  given  unto 
us,"  he  said,  quoting  Saint-Martin,  "  in  order  that  every  one  of 
its  minutes  may  be  exchanged  for  a  particle  of  truth.  I  am 
not  among  those  who  are  able  to  boast  of  an  existence  thus 
filled ;  yet  I  dare  to  bear  this  testimony  to  myself :  Yes,  thus 
I  too  understand  life."  f  Athirst  for  truth,  for  nearly  twenty 
years  in  possession  of  absolute  truth,  his  soul  could  not  find 
happiness  among  the  ruins  which  his  intellect  had  made.  Yet 
Scherer  did  not  die  of  his  metaphysical  wound  like  Jouffroy. 
Relativism,  cheerless  as  it  is,  precludes  absolute  despair  as 
well  as  absolute  knowledge.  It  cannot  be  a  doctrine  of  hope, 
but  it  can  teach  resignation.  The  crisis  was  long  and  Scherer 
sujBfered ;  but  even  before  it  was  over  he  had  become  a  literary 
critic  of  great  authority ;  he  was  soon  to  be  one  of  the  best 
champions  of  political  Liberalism  in  the  daily  press.  Life  was 
worth  living,  although  the  Absolute  was  in  its  grave.  Engaged 
in  congenial  work,  at  peace  with  his  conscience,  respected  even 
by  his  enemies,  he  was  able  to  reconquer,  not  merely  tranquillity, 
but  happiness.  "  How  happy  we  are  !  "  he  would  exclaim  in 
his  old  age.  In  this  again,  his  case  was  parallel  with  Kenan's — 
Renan,  whose  cheerfulness  seemed  so  puzzling  and  even  so 
offensive  to  M.  Jules  Lemaitre. 

He  would  probably  have  been  at  a  loss  to  reconcile  his 
positive  happiness  with  his  philosophy.  We  are  told  I  that 
he  had  thought  of  writing  a  treatise  on  the  subject,  and  had 
to  give  up  the  attempt.  His  last  words  on  moral  philosophy 
are  merely  words  of  resignation.  "To  be  happy  is  to  have 
measured  happiness  and  one's  self;  there  is  no  surer  way  of 
not  quarrelling  with  life  than  not  to  expect  too  much  from  it." 
"  The  universe  is  a  fact :  we  do  not  control  it ;  we  have  nothing 

*  Essay  on  Hegel  [Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  and  Melanges  d^Histoire 
Religieuse). 

t  Melanges  de  Critique  Religieuse,  Avertissevient.  \  Gr^ard,  I.e.  235. 


PROTESTANTISM  91 

to  do  but  to  accept  it.  .  .  .  Dry  and  bitter  though  they  be, 
these  truths  are  not  barren.  It  is  something  to  have  learnt 
that  among  the  problems  which  have  most  engrossed  the  human 
mind  there  are  some  which  have  no  solution,  and  even  no 
meaning.  And  the  acceptance  of  things  as  they  are,  the  habit 
of  taking  them  as  the  ineluctable  conditions  of  life,  is  a  pretty 
good  teacher  of  resignation.  If  one  does  not  suffer  any  the 
less,  one  is  less  irritated  by  suffering;  anguish  is  no  longer 
mingled  with  bitterness,  regrets  with  anger.  The  protest  of 
the  human  moral  sense  against  the  immorality  of  nature  and 
history  remains  ;  this  is  desirable ;  but  it  loses  the  feverish 
and  childish  form  of  rebellion.  *  0  Universe ! '  said  Saint 
Marcus  Aurelius,   *  what  thou  wilt,   that  will  I  also.'  " 

There  was  faith  in  the  orthodoxy  of  Scherer's  young  man- 
hood ;  there  was  no  less  faith  in  the  honest  doubt  which  filled 
his  mature  years  ;  there  seems  to  be  none  left  in  the  stoicism 
of  his  old  age.  So  this  life  of  noble  efforts  ended  with  words 
of  resignation — resignation,  which  is  naught  but  the  quietest 
form  of  despair.  This  alone  would  warn  us  that  there  was 
in   Scherer's  destiny   something  wrong  somewhere. 

Yet  it  cannot  be  said  that  he  erred,  still  less  that  he  sinned. 
His  reasoning  was  as  faultless  as  his  intentions  were  pure. 
He  was  not  moved  by  love  of  destruction,  for  he  struggled 
long  against  his  own  doubts ;  nor  by  intellectual  pride,  for 
he  was  no  worshipper  of  human  reason.  We  must  pity  him, 
but  hold  him  blameless. 

His  misfortune,  he  saw  this  clearly,  was  to  be  longing  for 
an  unchangeable  faith  in  an  age  of  transition.  He  was  by 
nature  a  conservative,  an  orthodox  ;  the  Absolute  had  been  his 
god,  and  he  mourned  for  it  long  after  it  was  dead  in  his  soul. 
Compare  his  literary  criticism  with  that  of  Jules  Lemaitre  : 
Lemaitre  may  defend  authority  and  tradition,  which  are  the 
deep  instincts  of  his  nature  ;  but  he  does  it  with  the  tone 
and  the  arguments  of  a  subjcctivist,  or,  to  give  him  the  name 
he  accepted,  of  an  impressionist.  Scherer  preached  Liberalism 
with  the  forceful  earnestness  of  a  theologian  :  while  expounding 
relativism,  he  remained  dogmatic.  One  cannot  read  his  article 
on    *'  The    Metaphysical    Illusion,"    his    review     of    Kenan's 


92       FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

Philosophical  Dialogues,  without  being  struck — and  possibly 
irritated — by  the  trenchant  expression  of  his  scepticism.  He 
was  the  infallible  Pope  of  universal  uncertainty. 

Scherer  was  only  forty-five  when  he  emerged  from  his  great 
crisis ;  many  men  have  recast  their  lives  at  a  more  advanced 
age — Lamennais  was  fifty  when  he  left  the  Church — and  we 
may  wonder  why  Scherer  did  not  go  beyond  mere  relativism. 
But  his  critical  faculties  had  developed  during  a  twelve-year 
battle  against  his  most  cherished  beliefs  :  his  scepticism  was 
now  alert  and  formidably  equipped  against  any  new  system. 
Besides,  he  had  loved  his  old  faith  so  dearly  that  he  shrank 
at  the  thought  of  giving  it  a  successor.  Thus  a  soul  meant 
to  be  filled  with  ardent,  unhesitating  convictions  was  to  remain 
empty,  and,  resigned  though  it  seemed,  it  could  not  but  mourn 
the  irrecoverable  faith. 

Yet  it  was  well  for  Scherer  that  he  did  not  recoil ;  not  only 
his  sincerity,  his  intellectual  courage,  will  remain  his  eternal 
honour,  but  in  this  life  they  saved  what  could  be  saved  of  his 
happiness.  Wavering  would  have  but  prolonged  his  agony 
and  forfeited  our  respect. 

4.  Quinet. 

Guizot  was  the  champion  of  Christian  orthodoxy ;  for  him, 
Protestantism  meant  a  faith  based  on  the  only  legitimate 
authority — the  Bible — and  on  the  Bible  alone.  The  liberals 
insisted  on  the  rights  of  the  individual  conscience,  a  principle 
which,  carried  out  by  Scherer  with  fearless  consistency,  led  him 
away  from  the  Church  altogether.  There  is  a  third  aspect  of 
Protestantism  :  historically,  it  is  a  reformed  religion,  freed  from 
the  superstitions  and  abuses  which  had  crept  into  the  traditional 
Church.  It  should  therefore  appeal  to  the  men  who  are  neither 
dogmatists  nor  investigators,  but  practical  Christians,  and  who 
are  dissatisfied  with  the  administration  and  the  policy  of  the 
Roman  Church.  In  a  country  like  France,  Christian  by  tradi- 
tion, but  impatient  of  "  clericalism,"  such  men.  Reformed 
Catholics  rather  than  positive  Protestants,  are  bound  to  be 
numerous. 

Circumstances,  under  the  Second  Empire,  seemed  favourable 


PROTESTANTISM  93 

to  such  a  movement  away  from  Rome  and  towards  Protestantism. 
The  old  eighteenth-century  hostility  against  Christianity  as  a 
whole  was  almost  extinct.  All  the  leaders  of  liberal  thought, 
all  the  great  Romanticists — Lamennais,  Lamartine,  Hugo, 
Michelet — had  paid  glowing  tributes  to  the  traditional  faith. 
There  was  no  lack  of  genuine,  conservative  religious  feeling. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  hoped-for  reconciliation  between  the 
Church  and  Liberalism  had  failed ;  Rome  was  becoming  every 
year  more  reactionary  in  her  temporal  policy,  more  intolerant 
of  modern  tendencies,  more  deeply  committed  to  unacceptable 
forms  and  beliefs.  It  was  increasingly  difficult  for  many  earnest 
Christians  to  remain  Catholics,  with  Veuillot  ruling  the  Church 
in  France  as  a  sort  of  Papal  legate.  Protestantism  would  have 
enabled  these  men  to  retain  all  the  essentials  of  their  religion 
without  sacrificing  their  dignity  as  thinkers  and  as  citizens. 

The  most  eloquent  apostle  of  this  movement  was  Edgar 
Quinet.  Brought  up  by  a  Protestant  mother,  for  whom  his 
admiration  was  as  boundless  as  his  love,  he  studied  for  ten  years 
at  Tubingen  and  other  German  universities,  and  married  the 
daughter  of  a  German  minister.  So  he  was  free  from  Voltairian 
prejudices.  Religion  was  ever  the  centre  of  his  historical  as 
well  as  of  his  literary  works.  He  was  one  of  the  first  men 
in  France  to  recognise  the  all-important  influence  of  religion  in 
human  history,  and  in  this  respect  Fustel  de  Coulanges  and 
Renan,  although  greater  than  he,  did  but  glean  in  his  field. 
He  was  rather  a  mystic  philosopher  than  a  historian.  Picturesque 
details,  the  psychology  of  individuals,  the  technicalities  of 
institutions,  were  for  him  points  of  secondary  importance.  His 
one  aim  was  to  study  the  laws  of  collective  development,  and  for 
him,  as  for  Bossuet,  these  laws  were  naught  but  the  expression 
of  God's  Will.  The  old  doctrine  of  Providence  was  rebaptized 
"  philosophy  of  history,"  and  under  its  new  name  became  one  of 
the  idols  of  the  early  nineteenth  century.  Quinet  was  even 
more  dogmatic  in  his  exposition  of  God's  purpose  with  mankind 
than  Bossuet  himself.  He  assumed  quite  naturally  the  attitude 
of  a  hierophant.  In  his  mind,  history  became  a  branch  of 
theology,  or  rather  a  substitute  for  theology. 

Except  for  this  theological  colouring,  his   interpretation  of 


94        FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

history,  before  1848,  did  not  differ  from  that  of  the  other 
Komanticists.  Like  them,  he  believed  in  the  Rights  of  Man, 
and  in  liberty  as  the  first  of  them  all.  Liberty  meant  both 
national  independence  and  democracy ;  Quinet  was  a  patriot — 
Waterloo  and  the  treaties  of  1815  rankled  in  his  soul — and  he 
sympathised  with  all  oppressed  and  struggling  countries — 
Greece,  Poland,  Italy,  later  Rumania.  He  hated  the  Catholic 
Church  as  the  arch-enemy  of  liberty  and  progress,  and  admired 
the  Revolution  of  1789,  which  had  proclaimed  the  new  gospel. 
Since  that  great  renovation,  France  was  a  Messianic  people,  the 
"  heir  of  Jesus  Christ."  Napoleon  personified  in  Europe  the 
French  ideal ;  he  was  the  crowned  apostle  of  nationality  and 
democracy.  But  all  great  benefactors  of  mankind  have  to 
expiate  their  daring  through  martyrdom  :  Waterloo  corresponds 
to  Caucasus  and  Golgotha. 

During  the  Second  Republic,  Quinet  played  a  creditable, 
though  not  a  leading  part  in  French  politics.  From  the  Coup 
d'Etat  to  the  fall  of  the  Empire  he  remained  in  exile.  After 
1859,  at  least,  this  exile  was  voluntary ;  it  was,  like  Hugo's, 
a  protest  against  a  regime  based  upon  force  and  fraud.  These 
new  circumstances  had  some  influence  on  his  opinions  without 
altering  them  radically.  Isolated,  he  became  more  original ; 
defeated,  he  was  less  optimistic,  and  he  gained  in  both 
directions. 

In  his  Christianity  and  the  French  Revolution  (1845)  he 
had  opposed  the  "  new  dogma  "  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  people 
to  the  Catholic  doctrine  of  Papal  infallibility.  Democracy  was 
then  a  political  and  religious  panacea :  the  Revolution  was 
"  truer  to  the  spirit  of  Christ  than  the  Church."  The  spectacle 
of  France,  the  chosen  nation,  "  Humanity's  right  arm," 
unanimously  condoning  the  crime  of  December,  had  a  sobering 
effect  upon  him.  Had  he  unreservedly  believed  in  the  new 
dogma  he  had  so  eloquently  preached,  he  should  have  bowed 
before  the  elect  of  God  and  the  people.  Quinet  refused  to 
accept  the  apparent  verdict  of  fate.  He  admitted  as  a  dogma 
the  liberty  of  our  moral  personality,  the  possibility  for  us  to 
progress  through  self- discipline ;  in  other  words,  he  reverted 
to  the  religion  of  conscience  and  responsibility,  without  abjuring 


PROTESTANTISM  95 

the  fatalistic  religion  of  Providence  and  Democracy.  The 
tendency  had  been  for  many  years  to  minimise  the  influence 
as  well  as  the  responsibility  of  individuals ;  heroes  were  but  the 
instruments,  geniuses  only  the  living  symbols,  of  immense 
collective  evolutions.  Qainet  restored  the  notion  of  man's 
spiritual  autonomy.  In  this  the  influence  of  his  Protestant 
mother  is  undeniable.  This  exalted  moral  sense  imparted  a 
stronger  originality  tu  his  writings  and  gave  his  life  its  flawless 
dignity. 

The  result  of  this  individualistic  evolution  was  that,  whilst 
remaining  a  democrat — or  rather  a  Republican — in  politics, 
Quinet  recanted  his  former  "  Demolatry."  His  Revolution 
(1865)  is  far  from  being  a  dithyramb  like  the  histories  of 
Michelet  and  Louis  Blanc,  or  even  the  earlier  and  more  conser- 
vative narrative  of  Thiers.  At  the  same  time  as  Mortimer- 
Ternaux,  ten  years  before  Taine,  he  refused  to  be  dazzled  any 
more  by  heroic  legends.  ''Idolatry,"  he  said,  "is  no  longer 
permissible.  Away  with  prejudices ;  away  with  sanguinary 
systems  ;  away  with  historical  fetishes — Caesar  or  Eobespierre  ; 
away  with  the  deification  of  the  People  !  "  So  fearless  was  the 
attack  that  in  spite  of  his  past  services,  his  integrity,  his  talent, 
his  irreconcilable  opposition  to  the  Church  and  the  Empire, 
Quinet  was  threatened  with  excommunication  by  the  democratic 
party.* 

The  Revolution  failed,  said  Quinet,  and  left  France  in  a  state 
of  latent  civil  war,  because  it  stopped  short  of  its  main  task  :  a 
religious  renovation,  a  new  Reformation.  Religion  is  the  very 
basis  of  society  :  a  country  whose  nominal  religion  is  at  odds 
with  the  rest  of  its  civilisation  is  fundamentally  unsound.  Now, 
the  Revolution,  while  it  destroyed  the  last  ruin  of  the  Middle 
Ages  in  civil  and  political  life,  left  practically  untouched  the  in- 
carnation of  the  mediaeval  spirit,  the  Catholic  Church.  "  The 
Constitution  of  the  Clergy  "  was  a  timid,  half-hearted  attempt. 
Chaumette  and  his  worship  of  Reason,  much  more  remarkable, 
were  misunderstood    and   derided.     Robespierre's   cult    of   the 

•  Cf.  Peyrat,  La  Revolution  et  le  livre  de  M.  Quinet,  1866.  It  seems  that 
in  his  Lettres  d'Exil  the  sharpest  criticisms  against  the  French  people 
have  been  attenuated  by  Mrs.  Quinet  when  she  edited  them  for  publication. 


96       FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

Supreme  Being  was  inspired  by  Rousseau's  Vicaire  Savoj^ard,  and 
Rousseau  as  a  religious  teacher  is  disqualified  on  account  of  his 
tolerance,  which  respects  even  superstitions  and  leads  to 
hypocrisy.*  In  religion,  the  Revolution  destroyed  nothing  and 
created  nothing. 

What  should  the  Revolutionists  have  done?  They  should 
have  imitated  the  thoroughgoing  methods  of  the  great  Reforma- 
tion, Wherever  it  triumphed,  it  condemned  the  old  religious 
institutions  and  set  up  new  ones,  and  it  was  not  until  the  old  had 
ceased  to  be  a  danger,  and  the  new  had  become  part  of  the 
national  organism,  that  religious  liberty  was  gradually  restored. 
The  breaking  of  images,  the  banishment  of  priests,  compulsory 
conformity,  were  integral  part  of  the  work  of  the  Protestant 
Reformation,  in  Geneva  as  well  as  in  England  or  in  Sweden. 
Previously,  in  Marnix  cle  Sainte-Aldegonde  (1857),  Quinet  had 
shown  that  the  Dutch  Revolution  owed  its  success  to  its  uncom- 
promising attitude  towards  its  adversaries.  It  is  an  illusion  to 
think  that  force  is  powerless  against  a  Church,  although  it  may  be 
futile  against  a  belief.  The  French  Revolution  was  despotic  in 
politics  and  liberal  in  religion  :  it  should  have  been  just  the 
reverse.  The  massacres  of  1793  were  odious,  because  "their 
violence  was  out  of  proportion  with  their  cause.  The  massacres 
of  Moses  have  not  harmed  Judaism,  nor  those  of  Mohammed  the 
Koran,  nor  those  of  Alva  Catholicism,  nor  those  of  Ziska  and 
Henry  VIII.  the  Reformation.  .  .  .  Men,  even  unbelievers, 
taken  as  a  whole,  have  always  shown  great  clemency  for  whoever 
sheds  blood  in  the  name  of  Heaven."  f 

A  strange_  theory  indeed,  excessive,  paradoxical,  and  above  all 
unexpected  ;  for  Quinet  was  a  humane  and  high-minded  man.  In 
the  Jesuits,  in  Ultramontanism,  he  had  denounced  religious  in- 
tolerance, and,  at  a  time  when  he  was  less  in  sympathy  with 
Protestantism,  thanked  God  that  France  was  free  from  the  taint 
of  exclusiveness.  I  He  was  probably  influenced  by  the  example 
of  England,  a  country  which  for  two  hundred  years  had  found  it 
necessary   to   defend  its  Protestant  faith  against  an  offensive 

*  The  Savoyard  Vicar  urges  the  wisdom,  nay  the  duty,  for  every  one  to 
remain  in  the  religion  of  his  family  and  country. 

t  Eevolution,  xvi.  7.  X  TJltramonianisme,  241. 


PROTESTANTISM  97 

return  of  Romanism,  and  which,  even  in  1860,  was  still  intoler- 
ant to  a  degree.  No  country  can  live  a  normal  life  without 
religion  :  it  is  to  Quinet's  lasting  credit  that  he  affirmed  this 
truth  more  emphatically  than  any  of  his  contemporaries.  Catho- 
licism is  incompatible  with  modern  principles  :  this  is  not  so 
evident,  but  it  is  after  all  a  defensible  idea.  Now,  what  new 
faith  would  he  substitute  for  the  old  ? 

In  his  letter  to  Eugene  Sue  on  the  "Religious  and  Moral 
Situation  in  Europe  "*  (1856),  Quinet  had  already  answered,  un- 
hesitatingly, "Protestantism,"  and,  of  all  the  forms  of  Protes- 
tantism, Unitarianism :  "  Certainly  it  would  be  an  immense 
progress  if  the  nations  could  be  drawn  away  from  Catholicism, 
which  represents  barbarous  mediaevalism,  on  to  one  of  the  most 
modern  forms  of  Christianity.  .  .  .  And  among  these  you  cannot 
have  failed  to  see  that  Unitarianism  is  the  one  most  in  harmony 
with  our  times,  for  while  it  preserves  a  shadow  of  Christian 
antiquity,  and  thus  reassures  the  trembling  spirit  of  the  people, 
it  also  goes  hand  in  hand  with  the  most  fearless  philosophy. 
Who  could  not  wish  that  the  voice  of  a  French  Emerson,  of  a 
Channing,  should  be  heard  in  the  midst  of  our  French  society,  in 
our  provinces,  in  our  workshops?  " 

Quinet  was  not  content  with  preaching  :  through  his  influence 
a  great  religious  movement  was  started  at  Brussels,  and  a 
Unitarian  Church  founded.  But  in  France  his  words  found  no 
echo.  The  case  of  Maurice  Sand,t  who,  with  his  wife,  became 
a  liberal  Protestant,  remained  an  exception.  Quinet  himself, 
the  apostle  of  Protestantism,  never  joined  a  Church,  even  the 
freest.  Nay,  whilst  a  Voltairian,  Merimee,  a  Positivist,  Taine, 
asked  for  a  Protestant  burial,  Quinet  remained,  in  death  as  in  life, 
a  free-thinker,  unconnected  with  any  form  of  organised  Christ- 
ianity. 

Why  did  he  never  take  the  decisive  step  ?     Perhaps  he  was 

too  much  of  a  Protestant,  if  Protestantism  meant  to   him  what 

the  name  seems  to  imply,  to  surrender  to  any  Church  a  particle 

'^i  his  spiritual  independence.     It  is  a  comparatively  easy  matter 

*  Le  Livre  dc  VExil :    Lettre  stir  la  Situatioyi,  etc.,  p.  453. 
t  The  son  of  George  Sand,  a  novelist  of  some  merit ;  cf.  G.  Sand's  Corre- 
spondence. 

7 


98   FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

to  remain  within  the  Church  of  one's  childhood,  or  to  return  to  it 
even  after  wandering  far  and  wide  ;  but  after  reaching  middle  life 
a  man  cannot  adopt  a  new  faith  except  as  the  result  of  a  radical 
and  irresistible  conversion.  Now  Quinet,  who  was  the  disciple 
and  the  young  friend  of  Creuzer,*  and  one  of  the  pioneers  in 
France  of  the  study  of  comparative  religion,  f  considered  Christ- 
ianity merely  as  a  sect  of  the  Church  universal.  His  admiration 
for  Protestantism  was  retrospective  and  moral ;  in  theology,  he 
remained  independent.  He  advocated  a  change  of  religious 
allegiance  as  a  compromise  between  *'  Komish  superstition  "  and 
his  ideal  of  philosophy,  as  a  transition  between  rigid  ecclesias- 
ticism  and  the  absolute  autonomy  of  the  individual  soul.  '*  I  do 
not  expect  the  people  to  become  philosophers  all  of  a  sudden,"  he 
wrote  to  Eugene  Sue.  Now  such  a  conscious  compromise  gives 
satisfaction  neither  to  the  intellect  nor  to  the  heart.  Men  are 
not  so  humble-minded,  or  so  foolish,  as  to  accept  anything  as 
"  good  enough  for  them,''  if  you  imply  that  something  better 
exists.  Unless  you  have  absolute  faith  in  the  religion  you 
preach,  how  can  you  expect  to  convert  a  whole  nation  ? 

In  contemporary  France  everything  short  of  Catholicism  seems 
to  lack  authority,  tradition,  efficacy,  splendour,  mystic  appeal. 
Everything  short  of  free-thought  seems  timid,  illogical,  half- 
hearted. Quinet  was  ever  drawn  to  Protestantism  by  a  sort  of 
nostalgic  attraction,  and  yet  remained  an  outsider.  He  was  thus 
a  wandering  spirit,  too  much  of  a  Protestant,  bent  on  individual 
salvation,  to  believe  in  sheer  Romantic  humanitarianism,  and  too 
much  of  a  free-thinker  to  be  a  Christian.  It  may  be  true  that  men 
have  treasures  of  indulgence  for  religious  fanatics  :  but  how  shall 
we  deal  with  this  Churchless  Huguenot,  who  advocated  violence 
on  behalf  of  an  undefined  creed,  of  a  disembodied  aspiration — a 
fanatic  indeed,  but  a  fanatic  without  a  doctrine  ? 

In  1870  Quinet  appeared  in  a  new  guise  with  his  large  work 
on  Creation.  It  is  sometimes  said  that  this  book  marked 
Quinet's  conversion   to   the  religion  of  science.  I      We  cannot 

*  The  author  of  the  Symbolik :  his  religion,  he  said,  was  that  of  Proclus 
and  Plotinus. 

t  Le  GiniQ  des  Religions,  1842. 

I  Quinet  had  before  criticised  the  religion  of  science  :  "  The  scientists  also 
have  their  chimera :  they  imagine  that  science  will  soon  take  the  place  of 


PROTESTANTISM  99 

accept  this  view.  Like  his  friend  Michelet,  Quinet  carried  into 
the  study  of  natural  history  the  methods,  the  feelings,  the  style 
of  his  other  works.  Creation  is  yet  another  eloquent  review  of 
universal  history,  this  time  extended  far  beyond  the  narrow  limits 
of  human  civilisation.  Quinet  read  into  geology  and  palaeontology 
all  his  own  moral  theories.  His  disappointment  with  democracy 
for  one  thing:  "It  is  possible  for  conscience  to  disappear  for  a 
time,  from  one  people,  even  from  almost  the  entire  race,  and  to 
survive  in  a  few  rare  individuals,  forgotten,  buried  alive."  * 
"  Conscience  is  the  result  of  a  victory  over  our  lower  nature  ;  [it] 
is  not  merely  a  gift ;  it  is  acquired  through  efifort  and 
strengthened  by  will ;  it  grows  by  the  same  law  which  causes 
every  being  to  struggle,  to  fight,  to  resist,  in  nature,  in  man 
himself.  .  .  .  This  sense  of  efi'ort,  this  victory  of  will,  prove 
that  we  are  free." 

This  is  all  the  positive  faith  expressed  in  this  book.  Man  is 
little— an  embryo,  a  "  fragment  of  himself,"  and  knows  little  : 
*'  What  will  happen  to-morrow?  We  know  not,  we  who  aspire 
to  eternity,  "t  Perhaps  a  new  race  will  wrest  from  us  the 
sceptre  of  the  world.  This  work,  so  different  from  the  usual 
piBan  to  science,  ends  in  tones  of  doubt  and  melancholy.  The 
last  word  of  wisdom  is  the  stoic  resignation  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  | 
and  when  Quinet  speaks  of  the  triumph  of  justice,  it  is  not  in  the 
form  of  an  affirmation,  but  of  a  prayer — a  prayer  mingled  with 
anguish  and  almost  with  reproach  :  *'  0  God,  who  in  these  days 
veilest  Thy  face,  do  not  permit  that  justice  should  fail  !  "  § 

No  layman  except  Renan  was  more  constantly  interested  in 
religious  problems  than  Quinet ;  and  he  treated  these  problems 
with  a  passionate  earnestness  which  made  Renan  seem  coldly 
rationalistic,  almost  Voltairian  in  comparison ;  no  one  assumed 

religion.  Thoy  do  not  know  human  nature.  Religion  and  science  are  in 
definitely  drawing  closer,  but  they  will  never  merge  into  one  :  they  are  the 
as3anptote3  of  the  great  human  curve." — La  Revolution. 

*  "  If  it  should  proclaim  that  wrong  is  right,  the  whole  human  race,  in- 
numerable and  degraded,  would  be  as  naught  compared  with  the  conscience 
of  one  just  man." — Cr.  ii.  397. 

t  ii.  408.  :  ii.  413. 

§  ii.  ch.  X.  The  New  Spirit  (1875)  is  in  the  same  strain,  more  optimistic, 
but  even  vaguer. — ii.  411, 


100      FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

more  naturally  the  tone  of  a  prophet  and  of  a  preacher.  Yet, 
when  it  comes  to  the  point  of  defining  the  doctrine  of  this  long 
life  and  of  these  thirty  volumes,  the  reader  is  at  a  loss.  Pan- 
theism, Democracy,  Stoicism  ?     Who  could  tell  ? 

Yet  if  religion  is,  not  a  doctrine,  but  an  inspiration,  and  a  law 
to  live  by,  Quinet,  ever  haunted  with  thoughts  of  the  infinite, 
ever  faithful  to  the  dictates  of  his  conscience,  ever  devoted  to  the 
service  of  God  and  the  people,  was  one  of  the  most  religious  men 
that  ever  lived.  He  was  neither  a  great  thinker  nor  a  supreme 
artist,  but  a  noble  soul.  His  life  was  his  best  work.  He  is  one 
of  the  Saints  of  modern  France.* 

5.  Conclusion. 

In  France,  Protestantism,  as  the  representative  of  authority, 
tradition,  orthodoxy,  is  overshadowed  by  Catholicism  :  this  Guizot 
himself  willingly  recognised.  As  the  champion  of  individualism 
in  religion,  it  merges  inevitably  into  free-thought,  as  happened 
in  the  case  of  Scherer.  For  the  compromise  dreamt  of  by 
Quinet — a  simpler  creed,  a  purer  Church,  as  a  preparation  for  the 
reign  of  universal  philosophy — there  seems  to  be  little  room. 
We  understand  now  why  Protestantism,  in  spite  of  its  glorious 
history  and  of  its  admirable  elements,  had  so  little  influence 
during  the  period  we  survey ;  why  its  progress  was  so  slow,  in 
spite  of  apparently  favourable  circumstances  ;  why  the  problems 
it  offered  were  never  of  national  scope.  French  Protestantism 
is  a  survival :  many  of  its  leaders  know  this  and  take  pride  in  it. 
They  do  not  welcome  modern  life.  Their  faith  has  the  poignant 
and  noble  melancholy  of  a  dying  city  ;  it  would  be  a  sacrilege  to 
tear  up  its  moss-grown  pavement  and  to  send  trolley-cars 
rumbling  along  its  deserted  streets.     Requiescat  in  pace  f 

*  A  small  and  well-meaning  group,  "  The  Union  of  Pree-Thinkers  and  Free 
Believers  "  (liberal  Protestants  and  religious-minded  agnostics),  seems  to  hold 
him  in  special  veneration. 


BOOK   II 
CHAPTEE   I 

VOLTAIRIANISM 

1.  Decline  and  Revival  of  Voltairianism. 

There  are  at  least  two  kinds  of  Voltairianism,  as  any  standard 
dictionary  will  tell  us  :  "  Voltairianism  :  the  principles  or  practices 
of  a  Voltairian  ;  the  spirit,  philosophy,  and  doctrine  of  Voltaire ; 
witty  and  scoffing  scepticism." 

The  spirit,  philosophy,  and  doctrine  of  Voltaire?  That  far 
transcends  mere  scoffing  scepticism,  however  witty.  Faith  in 
civilisation,  in  progress,  in  science  ;  hatred  of  intolerance  and 
superstition  ;  unremitting  activity  ;  effective,  courageous  benevo- 
lence :  if  this  be  Voltairianism,  who  would  not,  like  Thiers  in 
1845,  be  proud  of  being  called  a  Voltairian  ?  There  is  a  hero  in 
the  wrinkled,  sardonic  Patriarch  of  unbelief;  the  women  of  a 
frivolous,  sceptical  age  who  shed  tears  or  fainted  when  admitted 
to  his  presence  were  probably  less  mistaken  than  the  later 
critics  who  treated  him  as  a  mere  buffoon.  Lord  Morley,  with 
his  wonted  gravity  and  eloquence,  has  admirably  defined  and 
emphasised  the  prophetic  side  of  Voltairism,  as  he  chooses  to  call 
it.  In  spite  of  all  his  weaknesses,  Voltaire  was  the  Luther 
of  a  new  reformation,  a  good  and  faithful  servant  of  justice 
and   truth.* 

Voltaire,  the  Antichrist,  the  ambassador  plenipotentiary  of 
his   Majesty  the  Devil,  was  by   no  means  hostile  to  religion. 

*  John  Morley,  Voltaire,  1872,  ch.  i.,  Preliminary,  1-42. 

101 


10?.      FKENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

His  war-cry  :  "  Ecrasez  rinfame  !  "  was  raised,  not  against 
Christianity  as  we  understand  it,  but  against  its  counterfeit  and 
worst  enemy,  sectarian  fanaticism.  He  was  not  even  the  fierce, 
unrelenting  anti-clerical  so  luridly  depicted  in  Catholic  histories. 
He  remained  on  friendly  terms  with  his  old  masters,  the  Jesuit 
Fathers  Tournemine  and  Por^e.  He  had  a  sort  of  half-prankish 
lingering  fondness  for  the  Church.  We  do  not  forget  his 
innumerable  pamphlets  against  Biblical  miracles.  We  do  not 
expect  St.  Voltaire  ever  to  be  admitted  into  the  Catholic 
calendar.  Yet  his  philosophy,  on  the  whole,  is  surprisingly 
conservative.  Many  Protestants,  even  within  the  orthodox 
Churches,  would  agree  with  him  on  most  essential  points.  In 
England,  he  might  have  been  a  Dean  like  Swift,  or  even  a 
Bishop.  Was  it  not  rumoured  that  Madame  de  Pompadour 
wanted  to  bribe  him  with  a  Cardinal's  hat — a  characteristic  bit 
of  eighteenth-century  gossip  ? 

But  if  his  doctrines  were  not  incompatible  with  religion,  his 
temperament  was.  No  man  could  be  less  of  a  mystic.  His 
faults  and  his  virtues  are  alike  of  the  earth  earthly,  his  vanity 
like  his  common  sense,  his  warm,  active  sympathy  like  his  cruel 
wit.  In  religious  matters  he  had  but  two  passions,  neither 
ignoble,  but  both  negative  :  hatred  of  intolerance  and  hatred  of 
superstition.  His  second  great  weakness  lay  in  his  lack  of  the 
historical  spirit.  This  was  the  fault  of  his  times,  not  his  own  : 
not  only  was  he  a  great  historian  according  to  the  standard  of 
his  century,  but  he  was  a  path-finder,  whose  influence  is  felt  to 
this  day.  Yet  it  must  be  said  that  to  the  spirit  of  impartiality, 
comprehension,  and  sympathy  in  historical  studies — the  most 
precious  conquest  perhaps  of  our  own  age,  and  Germany's  noblest 
contribution  to  the  progress  of  the  human  mind — Voltaire  was 
almost  a  total  stranger.  Hence  the  childishness,  according  to 
modern  ideas,  of  his  Biblical  criticism.  His  stock  explanation 
for  miracles  was  fraud.  "  The  first  prophet  was  the  first  rogue 
who  met  the  first  fool."  In  (Edipe,  in  Mahomet^  we  find  the 
same  keynote  :  imposture  is  the  foundation  of  historical 
religions.  As  spiritual  experience  and  true  historical  insight 
were  alike  denied  him,  Voltaire's  only  guide  in  philosophy  and 
religion  was  Reason,  but  reason  narrowed  down  to  common  sense, 


VOLTAIRIANISM  103 

to  the  logic  taught  in  Jesuit  colleges  and  the  traditional  wisdom 
of  the  Parisian  bourgeoisie.  His  constant  and  most  eflfective 
method  is  that  of  reductio  ad  ahsurdicm :  whatever  is  contrary  to 
his  logic  and  experience  is  false.  Within  its  narrow  field, 
Voltaire's  reasoning  is  not  seldom  unanswerable :  and  it  is 
almost  invariably  witty.  At  the  merest  touch  of  his  needle-like 
irony,  the  fairest  bubbles  vanish.  There  is  no  visible  efi'ort : 
indeed,  the  result  alone  tells  you  that  whilst  he  was  smiling  with 
such  sprightly  grace,  a  death-thrust  has  been  dealt  to  some  time- 
hallowed  superstition.  Within  these  limits  Voltairianism  may 
be  legitimate  :  but  when  logic  disproves  the  obvious,  it  is  thereby 
committing  suicide.  And  Voltaire  was  blind  to  many  things 
which  are  obvious  to  men  of  the  twentieth  century. 

A  Voltairian,  therefore,  is  a  man  in  whom  common  sense  is 
unchecked  by  mystic  intuition,  passion,  imagination,  or  by  a 
rigorous  historical  and  scientific  training.  Applying  to  revela- 
tion, tradition,  and  dogma  his  unfailing  method  of  criticism,  he 
cannot  but  find  them  absurd,  and  as  ridicule  is  the  best  weapon 
against  pretentious  absurdities,  the  Voltairian,  witty  or  not,  will 
naturally  be  a  scoffer.  Unable  to  understand  the  thoughts  and 
feelings  of  the  religious-minded,  he  honestly  considers  them  as  a 
pack  of  superstitious  fools,  and  their  leaders  as  self-seeking 
hypocrites.  For  how  could  educated  people  sincerely  accept 
what  he  himself  rejects  as  palpably  erroneous?  A  Voltairian 
need  not  be  a  bad  man  or  a  fool :  as  a  rule,  he  is  a  decent 
citizen  and  a  sane,  safe,  and  sensible  person.  The  only  trouble 
with  him  is  hypertrophied  common  sense.  Tear  ofi"  his  sardonic 
mask,  and  in  the  Voltairian  you  will  recognise  our  old  friend  the 
Philistine. 


By  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  identity  of  the 
two  had  become  evident.  M.  Homais,  in  Flaubert's  novel 
Madame  Bovary,  is  the  immortal  incarnation  of  middle-class 
materialism,  pomposity,  and  ignorance  masquerading  as  free- 
thought.  Veuillot  had  already  proved  that  pungent  wit  was  no 
longer  on  the  side  of  unbelief,  and  Pontmartin  was  justified  in 
saying:   "Voltaire   has   become  the   idol   of  dolts:  that's   his 


104      FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

punishment."  This  alone  was  sufficient  to  damn  Voltairianism 
in  the  eyes  of  a  generation  neither  profound  nor  virtuous,  but 
practical  and  keen-witted.  Then,  in  their  terror  of  the  ''  Red 
Fiend  "  stalking  abroad  in  1848,  the  Voltairian  bourgeois  them- 
selves, led  by  Thiers,  Duvergier  de  Hauranne,  Villemain,  and 
other  converted  liberals,  "threw  themselves  at  the  feet  of  the 
bishops,"  because  they  saw  the  need  of  a  "  cassocked  police  "  to 
help  the  gendarmes  save  society.  Merimee,  who  remained  true  to 
his  negative  principles,  Doudan,  sanest  and  most  lovable  of  all 
Voltairians,  Barbey  d'Aurevilly  and  Veuillot,  uncompromising 
and  undiplomatic  Catholics,  poured  ridicule  on  these  converts 
*'by  the  grace  of  the  barricades."  But  a  mightier  cause  was  at 
work,  ruining  Voltairian  influence  in  the  best  minds  of  the  rising 
generation :  the  growth  of  the  scientific  spirit.  For  the 
philosophers  of  the  age  of  reason,  trained  in  mathematics, 
astronomy,  and  the  most  general  aspects  of  physics,  natural  laws 
were  simple,  universal,  eternal  :  the  world  w^as  a  grand  theorem, 
which  is  not  very  different  from  being  a  syllogism  ;  fallacies 
could  be  detected  at  once  by  almost  infallible  rules.  For  the 
nineteenth-century  thinker,  trained  in  the  historical  and  natural 
sciences,  the  world  is  a  growth  and  an  experiment :  our  reason, 
one  of  its  products  rather  than  its  law,  cannot  compass  its 
immensity.  Hence  new  conceptions  of  complexity,  difi'erence, 
evolution,  and  a  new  attitude  of  prudence,  tolerance,  sympathy. 
About  the  middle  of  the  century  the  new  spirit  won  the  battle, 
and  with  Comte,  Spencer,  Darwin  became  a  philosophy.  For 
these  men  and  their  disciples  a  syllogism  proved  very  little, 
a  witticism  nothing  at  all.  Renan,  so  often  called  Voltaire's 
continuator,  but  who  was,  in  his  early  career,  the  somewhat  naive 
and  trenchant  apostle  of  science,  expressed  the  opinion  of  his 
generation  in  his  merciless  posthumous  slashing  of  Beranger,  one 
of  the  last  genuine  Voltairians. 

Thus  during  the  first  decade  of  the  Empire  Voltairianism 
seemed  to  be  dying  fast,  and  was  represented  in  literature 
only  by  a  straggling  few.  Beranger,  since  the  fall  of  his  arch- 
enemy Charles  X.  in  1830,  had  been  living  on  his  glory,  which 
was  immense,  somewhat  burdensome,  and,  he  felt  it  himself, 
excessive.     He  was  no  hero,  but  an  amiable  epicure,  a  benevo- 


VOLTAIRIANISM  105 

lent  egoist,  with  the  semi-innocent  duplicity  of  a  man  who  had 
to  live  up  to  his  legend.  He  was  for  thirty  years  the  idol 
of  the  great  army  of  Philistines.  The  old  lover  of  Lisette  died 
loyal  to  his  Dleic  des  Bonnes  Gens — a  "  good  little  god  "  who 
winks  at  the  frolics  of  grisettes  and  wine-hibhers.  Viennet 
was  a  genuine  relic  of  the  eighteenth  century,  an  indomitable 
fossil  whose  wit  was  old-fashioned  to  the  point  of  quaintness, 
and  who  allied  inexhaustible  productivity  with  pugnacity  of 
the  genuine  Ferney  brand.  He  lived  so  long  that  he  was 
privileged  to  see  a  last  flickering  revival  of  his  doctrines,  and 
his  History  of  the  Pontifical  Power  (1866)  made  him  almost 
popular  for  the  first  time  in  forty  years.  It  was  rumoured 
that  on  his  deathbed  he  was  reconciled  with  the  Church.  This 
conversion  in  extremis  created  some  indignation,  not  against 
the  enfeebled  nonagenarian,  but  against  the  priests  who  thus 
tried  to  "  confiscate  his  death."  Yet  an  orthodox  end  would 
not  have  been  strictly  unvoltairian :  there  is  no  scoffing  at 
death,  and  common  sense  has  not  yet  fathomed  this  mystery, 
the  commonest  of  all.  As  their  creed  is  mostly  negative, 
holds  no  promise,  allays  no  fear,  many  Voltairians  accept  and 
even  implore,  in  articulo  mortis,  the  ministration  of  a  Church 
which  they  have  derided  all  their  lives. 

Doudan  spent  the  greater  part  of  his  life  in  the  small 
doctrinaire  world  of  which  the  Broglie  family  was  the  centre : 
just  the  cool,  equable  atmosphere  necessary  to  the  perfect 
development  and  preservation  of  his  qualities ;  unspoilt  by 
popular  criticism  or  applause,  he  was  a  perfect  type  of  middle- 
class  Voltairianism  at  its  best.  Moderation,  common  sense, 
equipoise,  tolerance,  all  the  neutral  and  solid  qualities  of 
middle-aged  men  in  comfortable  circumstances :  such  was  his 
ideal.  In  religion  he  and  his  friends  hated  fanaticism  like 
all  forms  of  exaggeration.  They  honoured  the  Church  within 
her  proper  domain,  but  they  measured  it  out  to  her  very  parsi- 
moniously. They  were  independent  Catholics  or  liberal  Protes- 
tants, and  moderate  anti-clericals.  These  earnest,  intelligent 
men  lacked  enthusiasm,  imagination,  prestige ;  they  were  short- 
sighted, self-centred,  self-satisfied ;  it  is  impossible  to  love 
or    admire    them    very    warmly :    but    they    were    "  infinitely 


106      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

respectable."  Doudan,  kindly,  witty,  unpretentious,  is  the  best 
of  them  all.  The  gospel  of  the  golden  mean,  such  as  we  find 
it  preached  in  his  best  pages,  may  fail  to  satisfy  our  intensest 
cravings  in  critical  hours,  but  it  remains  far  above  the  daily 
needs  of  the  average  man. 

Cousin,  the  dictator  of  State  philosophy  under  Louis-Philippe, 
the  Pope  of  Natural  Religion,  was  revising  and  toning  down  his 
famous  book  On  the  True,  the  Beautiful,  and  the  Good. 
Sincerely — for  he  no  longer  had  anything  to  fear  or  to  hope  for 
in  this  world — he  attempted  to  propitiate  the  one  great  spiritual 
power,  the  Church,  which,  according  to  him,  could  stem  the 
flood-tide  of  materialism.  He  wanted  an  alliance  between 
"  spiritualistic  "  philosophy  and  Christianity,  not  an  abdication 
of  human  reason.  But  nothing  short  of  unconditional  surrender 
would  satisfy  Rome,  which,  in  spite  of  all  concessions,  threatened 
to  place  his  books  on  the  Index  Expurgatorius.  Cousin,  a 
unique  mixture  of  the  Philistine,  the  mountebank,  and  the 
prophet,  spent  the  last  few  years  of  his  life  dodging  the  issue, 
and  died  uncommitted,  but  the  failure  of  the  Cousinian  com- 
promise had  long  been  apparent.  In  the  eyes  of  all  genuine 
philosophers,  the  Cousinians,  Spiritualists,  or  Eclecticists  were 
catechists  and  apologists  rather  than  investigators.  For  all 
problems  they  had  a  ready-made  solution,  the  one  imposed 
by  common  sense,  rebaptized  "impersonal  reason" — apparently 
the  kind  of  reason  that  does  not  reason,  as  M.  Faguet  remarks. 
They  had  some  of  the  qualities  and  all  the  faults  of  orthodox 
preachers.  Cousin  himself,  his  successors  Jules  Simon  and 
Caro,  were  excellent  orators,  for  they  were  not  afraid  of  the 
commonplace  and  appealed  to  a  large,  uncritical  public.  They 
were  practical  moralists  too,  and  as  such  they  spoke  many  noble 
words,  useful  and  uplifting,  even  when  they  were  trite  and 
redundant.  At  the  same  time,  a  slight  suspicion  of  insincerity 
coLild  not  but  attach  to  their  fine  phrases.  These  ^professed 
independent  thinkers  were  the  prisoners  of  an  orthodoxy.  They 
were  a  lay  clergy  of  Savoyard  Vicars. 

Voltairianism  was  thus  dying  of  inglorious  old  age,  when  the 
victory  of  the  retrograde  elements  within  the  Church  galvanised 
it  for  another  twenty  years.     For  Voltairianism,  weak  on  the  con- 


VOLTAIRIANISM  107 

structive  side,  shallow,  incomplete  though  it  be,  is  an  unrivalled 
weapon  against  certain  forms  of  superstition  and  ignorance.     This 
Saint-Beuve  and  Renan  themselves  conceded.     Anti-clericalism 
inspired  a   whole   literature    of  pamphlets,    novels,  and   plays. 
Le  Maudit,  an  anti-Jesuit  romance,  almost  rivalled  the  success 
of  Sue's    Wandering   Jew.     George   Sand's   Mademoiselle   La 
Qicintinie  appeared  in  the  staid  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes.     The 
middle-class  liberal  paper  Le  Siecle  issued   a  popular  edition 
of  Voltaire's  complete  works.     Larousse's  unwieldy  Dictionnaire 
Universel  was  in  spirit  as  well  as  in  scope  the  true  successor 
of  Diderot's   Encydopedie.     The   Pope   was    the    chief  target 
of  Voltairian  satire.     Lanfrey,  About,  Viennet  had  their  fling 
at  the  Pontifical  Power.     Maurice  Lachatre,  "  revolutionist  and 
lexicographer,    a   deist   with   Voltaire  and  J.   J.    Rousseau,    a 
spiritist  with  Allan  Kardec,"  told  in  ten  ingenuously   horrific 
volumes    The    History    of    the    Popes,    relating    the    Crimes, 
Murders,  Poisonings,  Adulteries,    and  Incests   of  the   lioman 
Pontiffs,    together    icith    the    Crimes    of   Kings,    Queens,   and 
Emperors, 

The  stage,  as  in  the  days  of  Voltaire,  became  a  pulpit. 
Eugene  Sue,  in  1849,  had  turned  his  romance  The  Wandering 
Jew  into  an  efi*ective  melodrama,  which  in  the  sixties  enjoyed 
a  revival  of  popular  favour.  Augier's  Fils  de  Gihoyer  is  a 
vigorous  satire  of  Catholic  society,  and,  with  Aristophanean 
directness,  of  its  great  journalist,  Veuillot.  Lions  and  Foxes 
is  another  anti-clerical  drama,  denouncing  the  machinations 
of  the  Jesuits  with  commendable  vigour.  Ponsard,  the  head 
of  the  "  Common  Sense"  school  of  dramatic  poetry,  gave  his 
dying  efi'orts  to  a  Galileo  which  was  to  be  the  Polyeucte 
of  Rationalism  and  science.  A  battle  was  expected  between 
Catholics  and  anti-clericals ;  but  the  stir  soon  died  out,  as 
the  play  was  crude  and  unconvincing — the  philosophy  of  Homais 
translated  into  pseudo-Cornelian  lines. 

Even  the  sleepy  halls  of  the  Luxembourg  rang  in  their  turn 
with  the  echoes  of  the  conflict.  The  first  Prince  of  the  Blood, 
Napoleon  (Jerome)  Bonaparte,  attacked  the  clerical  party  in 
violent  speeches  which,  from  such  a  man  and  in  such  an 
assembly,  created  great   sensation  and  some  scandal.     Saintc- 


108      FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

Beuve,  his  friend,  followed  his  example,  and  roused  even  more 
opposition  within  the  House  and  more  enthusiasm  without. 
Prince  Napoleon,  "  sl  Caesar  estranged  from  his  class,"  liked 
to  join  a  small  knot  of  free-thinking  philosophers,  scientists, 
and  literary  men,  either  at  Magny's,  a  restaurant  of  some  repute 
at  the  time,  or  at  Sainte-Beuve's.  One  of  these  agapes,  the 
famous  ''Grood  Friday  Orgy,"  kept  Parisian  tongues  wagging  for 
a  few  weeks.  Every  year,  on  Good  Friday,  small  bands  of  free- 
thinkers, of  the  shallowest  and  noisiest  description,  assemble 
to  a  feast  of  sausages  and  black-pudding — the  coarseness  of 
the  fare  probably  adds  a  sting  to  the  intended  insult.  Great 
was  the  indignation  when  the  rumour  spread  abroad  that  the 
first  Prince  of  the  Blood,  possibly  a  future  Emperor  of  the 
French,  had  attended  such  an  anti-clerical  feast  at  the  home 
of  a  well-known  Senator.  Sainte-Beuve,  sincerely  annoyed 
by  this  unexpected  storm,  repeated:  "Much  ado  for  an  omelet 
with  bacon!"  He  was  slandering  his  own  board;  the  in- 
criminated meat  course  was  a  pheasant  with  truffles :  the 
Senator  was  an  epicure.  Needless  to  say  that  neither  Sainte- 
Beuve  nor  his  guests  had  any  intention  of  turning  a  small, 
strictly  private  affair  into  an  anti-religious  demonstration.  The 
date  had  been  selected  without  any  thought  of  its  liturgical 
associations.  The  list  of  the  culprits  is  instructive  :  they  were 
Taine,  About,  Eenan,  Flaubert,  Robin,  Prince  Napoleon, 
and  Sainte-Beuve  himself :  a  Pleiad  hard  to  match  in  any 
time  or  country. 

All  these  men  were  branded  as  Voltairians.  The  term  fits 
exactly  Edmond  About,  who  was  even  nicknamed  "  Voltaire's 
grandchild."  Wit,  activity,  love  of  luxury  and  power,  an  easy 
bantering  style,  faith  in  progress,  and  no  aversion  to  enlightened 
despotism  :  all  this  the  brilliant  journalist  had  in  common  with 
the  Patriarch  ;  Voltaire's  deeper  qualities  were  lacking  in  his 
shallow  and  selfish  imitator.  Robin,  a  great  physiologist,  was 
a  materialist  of  the  rankest  type.  Flaubert  professed  no  creed 
but  "Art  for  Art's  sake."  Eenan,  Taine,  Sainte-Beuve  went 
far  beyond  mere  Voltairianism.  Yet,  in  Sainte-Beuve,  under 
the  mask  of  temporary  and  not  wholly  disinterested  sympathies 
for  one  Church  after  another,  there  lurked  a  permanent  element 


VOLTAIRIANISM  109 

not  only  of  indifference,  but  of  hostility  to  religion.  His 
scoffing  scepticism  was  admirably  veiled  :  we  feel  its  presence 
all  the  same. 

2.  Spiritual  Nihilism:  Merimee. 

In  Prosper  Merimee  "  scoffing  scepticism  "  affects  no  dis- 
guise and  suffers  no  compromise.  "  He  was  a  great  atheist,  an 
outrageous  materialist,  the  personal  enemy  of  Providence  ;  he 
denied  the  existence  of  God,  and  yet  he  hated  Him  as  one 
hates  a  master."  In  thus  summing  up  the  Credo — or  rather 
the  Nego — of  his  friend  H.  Beyle  (Stendhal),  Merimee  was 
summing  up  his  own.  The  arch-scoffer  of  Ferney  believed 
intermittently  but  sincerely  in  philosophy,  in  humanity,  in  an 
avenging  God.  Here  we  have  Voltaire  out-Voltaired,  destruc- 
tive scepticism  in  all  its  purity,  undefiled  by  any  element  of 
affirmation.  Merimee  is  an  extreme,  almost  a  pathological  case, 
perhaps  the  last  of  its  kind  among  writers  of  the  first  rank,  and 
for  that  reason  he  deserves  our  attention. 

When  Merimee  was  born  in  1803,  Chateaubriand  had  recently 
published  his  Genie  clu  Christianisme,  Bonaparte  had  signed  a 
Concordat  with  the  Pope :  after  twelve  years  of  revolution  and 
schism,  the  nation  was  fast  returning  to  Catholicism.  Yet 
Merimee's  family  was  not  carried  with  the  tide :  the  child  was 
never  baptized.  When,  in  later  life,  he  would  say  "We 
Pagans,"  he  was  not  using  the  word  metaphorically.  In  his 
education,  otherwise  fairly  well  balanced,  Christianity  was 
totally  ignored. 

At  thirty,  Merimee,  who  knew  Byron's  Do?i  Juan  by  heart, 
affected  the  pose  of  his  favourite  hero.  It  must  be  said  in 
extenuation  that  about  that  time  the  Byronic  infection,  under 
many  forms  —  Byronic  despair,  Byronic  rebellion,  Byronic 
dandyism — was  pretty  general.  Merimee  was  for  a  few  years 
a  perfumed  and  heartless  cynic.  Not  for  more  than  two  or 
three  years  perhaps  :  but  he  was  to  retain  through  life  the  fame 
of  a  dangerous  rake.  A  certain  native  coldness  of  heart,  an 
intense  dread  of  being  gulled,  a  fastidious  taste  which  made 
gushing  and  mawkish  sentimentality  unbearable  to  him,  too 
intimate  an  acquaintance  with  the  literature  of  the  eighteenth 


110      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

century,  too  great  an  admiration  for  a  slightly  conventional 
ideal  of  English  self-mastery  and  reserve,  a  place  behind  the 
scenes  in  the  great  political  comedy  of  the  early  thirties, 
a  godless  youth,  and  the  friendship  of  Stendhal :  with  all 
these  elements  in  him,  all  these  influences  round  him, 
Merimee  could  not  help  being  a  sceptic,  unless  he  had  been 
a  saint. 

He  was  no  saint ;  and  for  many  years  he  seemed  to  find  in 
his  own  infidelity  a  perpetual  source  of  gratification  and  pride. 
As  though  his  Memoir  of  Henry  Beyle  were  not  sufficiently 
Voltairian  in  its  public  form,  he  had  several  copies  privately 
printed,  with  blasphemous  and  obscene  additions,  and  dated  : 
''  The  1854th  year  of  the  Nazarene's  imposture."  And 
Merim6e  was  a  man  of  undoubted  intelligence,  taste,  and 
refinement :  but  irreligion  with  him  rose  almost  to  the  point 
of  a  mania. 

Merimee  had  at  least  one  merit :  he  was  sincere  and  con- 
sistent in  his  opinions,  and  did  not  change  them  to  suit  the 
times.  His  cynicism,  after  all,  was  honest  and  refreshing  com- 
pared with  Villemain's  recent  and  questionable  orthodoxy.  He 
vented  his  ill-humour  about  the  Pope,  the  French  clergy,  the 
Faubourg  Saint-Germain,  the  whole  clerical  party,  with  the 
greatest  freedom  in  his  letters  to  Panizzi,  wdth  more  subtle 
irony  in  those  to  his  famous  *'  Unknown." 

Merimee  affected,  under  the  Empire,  to  be  a  man  of  the 
world  rather  than  a  man  of  letters.  But  the  role  he  had  chosen, 
or  that  circumstances  had  thrust  upon  him,  obliged  him  to 
associate  constantly  and  intimately  with  those  very  "  clericals  " 
whose  superstition  and  fanaticism  he  so  much  despised.  Every- 
where, in  society,  at  the  Academy,  in  the  Senate,  at  Court,  he 
encountered  the  enemy.  Fate's  irony  had  willed  it  that  the 
great  scoffer  should  be  the  friend  and  protege  of  her  Most 
Catholic  Majesty  the  Empress  Eugenie.  Her  mother,  the 
Countess  of  Teba  and  Montijo,  had  been  M^rimee's  best  friend 
for  twenty  years.  He  had  taught  his  future  sovereign,  then 
a  little  Spanish  girl  of  six  or  seven,  the  rudiments  of  French ; 
he  had  led  her  by  the  hand  in  the  Paris  streets,  with  occasional 
stops  at  candy-stores.     The  Empress  always  kept  her  respect 


VOLTAIRIANISM  111 

and  affection  for  "  Monsieur  Merimee,"  as  she  would  persist  in 
calling  him,  years  after  his  death,  when  for  the  whole  world  he 
had  become  "  Merimee."  Through  her  direct  influence  he  was 
made  a  Senator,  and  it  was  reported  that  she  hailed  his  appoint- 
ment with  undisguised,  even  exuberant,  delight.  On  his  side, 
Merimee  was  no  self-seeking  courtier,  but,  to  the  end  of  his  life, 
the  independent,  respectful,  and  passionately  devoted  friend  of 
the  Empress.  A  dying  man,  he  dragged  himself  to  Paris,  and 
urged  Thiers  to  save  the  dynasty  after  the  disaster  of  Sedan. 
The  revolution  of  the  4th  of  September,  1870,  dealt  him  the 
death-blow.  He  probably  never  was  a  very  stanch  Bonapartist, 
but  he  was,  with  all  his  heart,  a  Eugenist.  Now,  in  the 
Imperial  circle,  by  the  side  of  the  silent,  dreamy  Emperor, 
Prince  Napoleon  represented  free  -  thought,  the  Empress 
championed  the  Catholic  Church.  The  two  were  openly  at 
odds :  thus  Merimee's  convictions  and  his  sympathies  were 
at  variance.  He  admired  Prince  Napoleon  and  disliked  him  ; 
even  Sainte-Beuve  he  could  not  wholeheartedly  support.  He 
found  it  impossible  to  open  his  mouth  in  the  Senate  except 
on  three  trivial  occasions. 

At  Court  and  in  society,  Merimee  was  more  in  his  element 
than  in  political  life,  and  retained  his  freedom  of  speech. 
Many  attempts  were  made  for  his  conversion.  He  received  holy 
medals  from  ladies  of  exalted  rank,  anxious  for  his  salvation. 
To  one  of  these  lovely  missionaries  he  expressed  his  willingness 
to  be  baptized,  provided  she  would  act  as  godmother  and  hold 
him  over  the  font.  Of  these  attempts,  the  most  constant  and 
systematic  was  made  b}'  Madame  de  Larochejacquelein :  his 
letters  to  her,  published  in  1896,  revealed  a  new  Merimee, 
an  earnest,  well-informed,  respectful  critic ;  an  unbeliever,  but 
no  longer  a  boastful  one  ;  a  man  in  whom  honest  doubt  was 
tinged  with  regret  and  melancholy.  Such  a  change  does  great 
credit  to  Merimee' s  correspondent,  to  her  sincerity,  her  intelli- 
gence, and  her  tact.  But  it  is  also  due  to  a  change  in  the 
general  atmosphere.  The  last  ten  years  of  Louis-Philippe's 
reign,  the  first  few  of  the  Empire,  had  been  intensely 
materialistic  :  about  1860,  on  the  contrary,  the  conflict  between 
science  and  religion  was  so  clearly  defined,  so  intense,  that  even 


112      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

a  careless  dilettante  like  Merimee  could  not  but  feel  at  times 
the  vanity  of  mere  irony. 

Thus  we  see  Merimee  in  the  guise  of  a  theologian,  well 
versed  in  scriptural  lore,  proposing  and  defending  his  own  inter- 
pretation of  a  Greek  word  in  the  Gospel — maintaining  his 
ground  with  firmness  and  without  pedantry,  and  although  never 
indulging  in  an  unseemly  jest,  still  a  great  master  of  light 
epistolary  style. 

"  There  are,"  he  says,  "  two  difi'erent  ways  of  believing.  The 
first  is  founded  on  presumption  checked  by  reasoned  criticism ; 
the  other  is  based  on  personal  feeling.  ...  To  produce  this 
feeling  without  appealing  to  reason  is  a  faculty  or  a  gift  which 
is  not  imparted  to  everybody.  I  quite  understand  the  words, 
'  Seek  and  you  shall  find,'  but  I  do  not  think  they  fit  my  case  at 
all.  If  the  ordinary  rules  of  historical  criticism  are  applied  to 
religious  records,  the  authenticity  of  tradition  will  be  even  less 
credible  than  the  account  of  the  early  years  of  Rome  given  by 
Livy.  Whoever  reads  the  Bible  like  an  ordinary  book,  without 
believing  in  it  a  priori,  will  see  nothing  in  it  but  a  very  ancient 
compilation,  full  of  the  faults  and  beauties  of  Oriental  literature. 
The  New  Testament,  apart  from  the  biographical  legend  it  con- 
tains, differs  from  all  ancient  books  in  the  admirable  morals  it 
teaches,  presented  by  its  practical  side  and  addressed  to  every- 
body. It  is  the  epitome  of  the  best  principles,  formerly  reserved 
by  the  Greek  philosophers  for  a  small  number  of  adepts,  now 
placed  within  the  reach  of  all  men  without  exception.  It  seems 
evident  to  me  that  there  is  no  better  rule  of  conduct  to  follow, 
whatever  doubts  one  may  entertain  about  the  origin  of  the 
book.  .  .  .  It  is  never  easy  to  form  a  conviction  when  one  has 
no  faith  and  merely  applies  the  rules  of  scientific  criticism. 
Even  in  purely  material  problems,  like  that  of  the  magnet,  our 
science  is  soon  baffled.  Our  earth  is  but  a  speck  in  the  uni- 
verse ;  and  yet,  shall  we  ever  fathom  all  its  secrets  ?  As  for 
understanding  superhuman  things,  we  cannot  do  it,  for  that 
would  require  a  superhuman  nature."  Thus,  under  the  influence 
of  an  earnest  Christian,  Merimee's  bantering  scepticism  changed 
and  deepened  into  pure  scientific  scepticism,  and  that  honest 
doubt   worth  half  the  creeds.     Let  us  note  that  this  doubt  is 


VOLTAIRIANISM  113 

personal,  not  dogmatic.  M^rimee  does  not  say  that  to  affirm 
without  proof,  in  other  words,  to  believe,  is  an  error  and  a  weak- 
ness ;  it  is  "  a  particular  disposition  of  the  mind."  Not  to  have 
this  ''  particular  disposition  "  is  not  a  superiority  but  an  evil, 
**  an  evil  hopeless  in  my  case."  Merimee  at  times  has  almost 
the  wish  to  believe.  "  I  often  think  of  God  and  the  other  world, 
sometimes  with  hope,  sometimes  with  doubt.  The  existence  of 
God  seems  to  me  very  probable,  and  I  find  nothing  objection- 
able in  the  beginning  of  the  Gospel  according  to  St.  John.  As 
for  the  other  world,  I  cannot  help  considering  it  as  an  inven- 
tion of  our  human  vanity."* 

■  But  he  never  went  beyond  a  velleity ;  his  critical  sense  was 
too  strong,  his  lack  of  mysticism  too  radical.  If  ever  he  believed 
he  would  remain  within  the  limits  of  orthodox  Voltairianism, 
like  his  friend  Beranger,  for  instance  :  he  might  accept  "  natural 
religion,"  so-called,  but  on  the  question  of  the  ''positive  re- 
ligions" he  would  remain  uncompromising.  Without  any  pro- 
vocation, with  due  gravity,  he  could  not  but  tell  his  correspondent 
that  he  considered  Catholic  theology  full  of  Pagan  superstitions, 
the  history  of  the  Catholic  Church  bloodstained,  its  present 
policy  dangerously  narrow  and  bigoted.  He  remained  "  anti- 
clerical "  to  the  last. 

Was  he  ever  tempted,  as  a  compromise,  to  join  the  Protestant 
Church?  Merimee's  will,  dated  May  30th,  1869,  stated:  "I 
desire  that  a  Lutheran  minister  be  called  to  my  funeral."  His 
desire  was  respected.  The  minister.  Rev.  Napoleon  Roussel,  in 
an  aggressive  speech,  claimed  the  dead  man  for  his  Church. 
This  unexpected  posthumous  conversion,  even  at  that  tragic 
time,  created  a  scandal.  Merimee  a  Protestant !  It  seemed 
almost  like  a  supreme  prank  of  the  great  mystifier.  He  had 
expressed  his  admiration  for  St.  Paul  ;  he  had  confessed  that 
family  prayers  in  a  Scottish  home  moved  him  deeply.  On  the 
other  hand,  much  as  he  disliked  Catholic  monks,  he  declared  he 
loved  clergymen  even  less.  They  had  given  him  a  poor  lunch 
in  gorgeous  surroundings — unpardonable  ojBfence  !  No  man  had 
ever  less  of  the  true  Protestant  spirit  than  Merimee.  He  never 
was  converted,  and  we  must  find  some  other  explanation  for  liis 
strange  request. 

*  Revue  des  Deux  Mondea^  cxxxiv.,  p.  833. 

8 


114     FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

We  must  repeat  that  the  traditional  hold  of  Catholicism  on 
the  French  people  was  still  so  strong  that  many  avowed  Vol- 
tairians dared  not  marry  or  die  without  the  ceremonies  of  the 
Church.  "Civil"  burials,  being  comparatively  few,  attracted 
great  attention,  and  assumed  the  significance  of  an  anti-clerical 
demonstration.  Such  was  the  case  with  Sainte-Beuve's  funeral 
in  October,  1869.  Merimee  was  an  Academician,  a  Senator,  a 
friend  of  the  Empress,  as  well  as  a  professed  unbeliever.  He 
naturally  expected  that  his  death  would  not  pass  unnoticed  ;  he 
could  hardly  foresee  the  terrible  events  which  were  to  crowd  in 
the  next  fifteen  months.  An  anti-clerical  demonstration  on  his 
grave  would  easily  turn  into  a  manifestation  of  hostility  against 
the  Grovernment  he  supported,  and  particularly  against  the 
sovereign  he  loved.  He  did  not  wish  to  be  given  a  posthumous 
triumph  by  a  party  which  he  hated  almost  as  much  as  he  hated 
the  Church,  the  revolutionary  Democrats,  the  friends  of  Easpail, 
Hugo,  Garibaldi.  '*  The  Jesuits  or  the  Bousingots  ?  "  he  once 
said.  The  alternative  was  painful.  The  only  loophole  was  a  non- 
Catholic  religious  service,  which  would  give  no  advantage  to 
either  party. 

Merimee  was  also  probably  influenced  by  his  desire  not 
to  grieve  some  intimate  friends,  and  especially  two  elderly 
English  ladies  with  whom  for  several  years  he  spent  the 
winter  at  Cannes,  on  the  Riviera.  But,  apart  from  such 
considerations,  he  had  long  before  expressed  his  wish  not 
to  depart  this  earth  without  some  sort  of  a  farewell  ceremony. 
When  his  friend  Mrs.  Childe  died,  he  wrote  :  "  There 
was,  I  believe,  a  service  in  her  own  home,  but  no  one  was 
invited.  That  was  painful  to  me.  I  have  on  this  subject 
Pagan  ideas.  Have  you  ever  read  Homer  ?  For  the  Greek 
heroes  it  was  a  great  sorrow  to  die  without  being  mourned  for, 
without  being  buried.  For  myself,  I  would  like  a  cere- 
mony. .  .  ."*  Merimee  thus  remained  a  Pagan  to  the  end, 
even  in  his  Protestant  burial.  But  the  young  cynic,  so  proud  of 
his  being  unbaptized,  is  far  less  attractive  and  human  than  the 
old  Senator  longing  for  sympathy  round  his  grave. 

At  his  worst,  self-satisfied,  scoffing  doubt ;  at  his  best,  grave, 
*  Beime  des  Deux  Mojides,  cxxxiv.,  p.  12  (1856). 


VOLTAIRIANISM  115 

reasoned,  chastened  doubt.  Shall  we  find  in  him  nothing  but 
\  negation  ?  He  was  a  scholar,  and  believed  in  the  critical 
method,  but  it  can  hardly  be  said  that  ho  believed  in  science. 
He  saw  its  limits  too  close  at  hand  ;  he  thought  that  we  are  but 
gathering  pebbles  by  the  seashore.  In  science  he  took  no 
/interest  except  in  exact,  minute  facts.  He  lacked  that  power  of 
sympathy  and  imagination  which  transmutes  versification  into 
poetry,  erudition  into  science,  morality  into  religion.  With  all 
his  learning,  his  application,  his  literary  gifts,  he  was  unable  to 
write  a  real  book  of  history.  He  had  no  faith  in  any  political  or 
social  movement.  He  was  neither  a  Royalist  nor  a  Republican, 
\  and  hardly  a  Bonapartist.  "  Man  delights  me  not,  nor  woman 
neither,"  he  would  repeatedly  quote.*  He  had  no  great  love  for 
his  kind.  His  times  seemed  particularly  mean  and  stupid  to 
him.  This  universal  contempt  was  one  of  his  most  unpleasant 
traits.  The  man  who  dismisses  Victor  Hugo  with  the  epithet 
*'  fool,"  and  would  not  have  read  Salammbo  had  any  other  book 
been  at  hand,  if  it  were  only  La  Cuisiniere  Bourgeoise — such  a 
critic  may  be  very  learned,  clear-sighted,  and  witty,  but  his  field 
of  vision  is  singularly  narrow. 

M^rimee  lived  without  hope,  without  illusion,  and  yet  not 
without  fear.  With  all  his  irony  and  cynical  pose,  he  loved 
his  friends  and  his  country  more  dearly  than  he  cared  to  confess. 
The  regime  which  he  supported,  the  very  society  he  moved  in, 
the  philosopliical  ideas,  the  literary  forms  he  preferred,  all  that 
imparted  to  his  life  some  charm  or  some  interest,  was  threatened 
with  destruction.  He  foresaw,  without  dreaming  it  was  so  near, 
the  catastrophe  which  was  to  overtake  his  sovereign  and  his 
country.  So  his  irony  has  not  the  triumphant  ring  which  makes 
Voltaire's  wholesome  after  ail ;  neither  has  his  scepticism  the 
tolerant,  comfortable  quality  of  Montaigne's,  who  considered 
*''  idleness  and  incuriosity  a  very  soft  pillow  for  a  well-made 
head."  There  is  an  anecdote  in  Voltaire's  Correspondence  that 
Merimee  was  fond  of  quoting  :  ' '  Harlequin  was  falling  from  the 
fifth  story  of  a  building.  As  he  went  whizzing  by,  some  one  on 
the  third  floor  asked  him,  '  How  do  you  like  it  ? '  '  All  right,  so 
far,'  he  answered,  '  if  only  it  would  last ! '  "  A  moment's  fall,  then 
•  Lettres  dune  Inconnue,  ii.  3-4G  ;  Beviie  des  Deux  Mondes,  cxxxiv.,  p.  18. 


116      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

annihilation :  such  was  Merimee's  conception  of  life.  Without 
illusions,  but  elegant  and  ironical  to  the  last,  he  continued  the 
race  of  the  noblemen  who,  in  1793,  made  epigrams  on  the  steps 
of  the  scaffold.  His  wit  has  no  cheer,  his  pessimism  no 
grandeur.  Despair  smirking  in  Court  dress  is  not  an  elevat- 
ing spectacle.  He  was  a  spiritual  nihilist,  but  not  on  the 
heroic  scale — un  Ecclesiaste  de  salon,  too  keen  and  too  sincere 
to  be  despised,  but  too  frivolous  to  be  pitied. 


The  spirit  of  Voltaire,  as  we  have  attempted  to  show,  offers 

p  two  aspects.     On  one  side,  it  means  fearless  intellectual  honesty 

i      and  militant  love  of  mankind  ;  on  the  other,  common  sense  as 

I      the  sole  test  of  everything,  and,  as  a  result,  scoffing  scepticism, 

I      spiritual  inanity,  self- stultification  under  a  thin  veneer  of  wit. 

Unfortunately   for  Voltaire,  whose   heroic   services    deserved   a 

better  reward,  it  is  with  this  second   meaning   that  the   word 

"  Voltairianism  "  is  generally  used. 

Superstition,  intolerance,  priestcraft,  are  great  evils  in  them- 
selves ;  and  against  such  Voltairianism  is  a  formidable  engine 
of  war.  But  there  may  be  such  a  thing  as  too  efficient  a 
weapon.  We  are  the  poorer  by  the  total  destruction  of  those 
we  combat :  the  ideal  victory  consists  not  in  the  annihilation, 
'  but  in  the  assimilation  of  one's  former  foes.  Had  Voltairianism 
j  been  able  to  breathe  into  the  old  religion  a  new  spirit  of  freedom 
and  humanity,  or  to  catch  from  it  some  of  its  moral  efficacy  and 
mystic  depth,  the  French  Reformation  of  the  eighteenth  century 
would  have  been  as  beneficial  as  the  German  Reformation  of  the 
sixteenth.  Unfortunately,  the  conflict  between  Catholicism  and 
Voltairianism  was  not  one  that  could  be  compromised.  The 
fanaticism  of  common  sense  is  incompatible  with  the  fanaticism 
of  authority  and  tradition.  Even  when  we  feel  that  many  of 
Voltaire's  victims  deserved  their  fate,  we  cannot  help  regretting 
the  undignified  method  of  their  overthrow — unworthy  alike  of 
their  past  glory  and  of  their  victor's  noble  purpose.  We  fear 
that  no  doctrine,  no  ideal,  however  lofty,  could  stand  the  test 
of  this  pitiless  and  irrefutable  criticism.  Whatever  may  have 
been   the   intentions   of  its  chief  exponent,  Voltairianism  has 


VOLTAIRIANISM  117 

proved  indiscriminately  destructive.  The  soul  that  has  once 
accepted  it  is  not  only  laid  waste,  but  for  ever  embittered, 
sullied,  and  shrunken.  Fortunately  men  are  seldom  consistent 
in  their  attitude  of  mind ;  for  unchecked  Voltairianism,  starting 
innocently  enough  with  the  praise  of  common  sense,  leads  no- 
whither  but  to  the  universal  and  incurable  cynicism  of  Merimee. 


CHAPTER    II 

ROMANTIC    HUMANITARIANISM 

1.  Formation  of  Romantic  Humanitarianism  {before  1848). 

Romanticism,  as  a  recognised  school  in  French  literature, 
died  in  the  early  forties,  after  two  decades  of  splendour.  At 
the  moment  when  its  leaders  were  at  last  reaping  academic 
honours,  the  movement  seemed  to  be  struck  with  barrenness. 
The  authors  seemed  exhausted ;  the  public  was  indifferent  or 
hostile.  Rachel  revived  the  popularity  of  classical  tragedy. 
Ponsard's  Lucrece  triumphed  within  a  few  weeks  of  the  failure 
of  Hugo's  last  drama  for  the  stage,  Les  Burgraves.  And 
when  Celestin  Nanteuil  was  asked  for  three  hundred  young  men 
to  defend  the  unpopular  masterpiece  as  Hernani  had  been 
defended,  he  had  to  reply,  with  a  melancholy  shake  of  his 
long  locks:  ''Tell  your  master  that  there  are  no  young  men 
any  more." 

/    The  Romantic  school  was  dead,  but  not  the  Romantic  spirit. 

(  Only  it  had  found  a  new  channel — politics.  Lamartine  was  the 
moral  leader  of  the  opposition  to  the  July  monarchy.  Hugo 
was  a  member  of  the  House  of  Peers,  with  opinions  still  uncer- 
tain, but,  whether  in  the  form  of  Bonapartism  or  of  Orleanism, 
leaning  towards  democracy.  Quinet  and  Michelet,  abandoning 
pure  history,  had  turned  their  professorial  chairs  at  the  College 
de  France  into  democratic  and  anti-clerical  tribunes.  George 
Sand  alternated  socialist  romances  with  her  sweet  tales  of 
peasant  life  in  Berry.  Vigny's  solitary  thought  was,  on  a 
different  plane,  undergoing  the  same  evolution.  Musset  almost 
alone  was  not  affected  by  this  transformation,  this  rejuvenation 
of  Romanticism. 

118 


ROMANTIC  HUMANITARIANISM  119 

A  radical  transformation  indeed :  not  a  few  Komanticists 
burnt  what  they  had  worshipped.  Legitimist  in  1822, 
Romanticism  was  democratic  in  1848.  Its  aristocratic  indi- 
vidualism had  changed  to  Socialism  in  the  widest  sense.  Its 
love  for  the  Middle  Ages  had  turned  to  hostility  ;  its  Catholicism 
was  replaced  by  a  vaguely  pantheistic  humanitarianism.  Yet 
under  these  contradictory  manifestations  the  same  spirit  pre- 
vailed, unmistakably. 
[^  What  is  the  spirit  of  Romanticism  ?  Is  it  a  disease,  as  some 
of  its  earliest  opponents  roundly  said  nearly  a  century  ago,  and 
M.  Lasserre  but  yesterday?  Is  it  decadence,  as  M.  Nisard 
believed  to  his  dying  day,  or  the  Commune,  as  Thiers,  the  arch- 
Philistine,  told  Remusat  at  the  time  of  the  great  insurrection  ? 
Is  it  Christianity  opposed  to  Paganism,  the  dreamy  and  melan- 
choly North  opposed  to  the  lively  and  clear-thinking  South, 
spontaneity  and  raciness  opposed  to  the  elaborate  imitation  of 
ancient  models?  Is  it  Mediaevalism — a  new  Renaissance — a 
return  to  Nature — the  combination  of  extremes — a  fondness  for 
the  abnormal — Catholicism — Protestantism — a  reaction  against 
the  Revolution — the  continuation  of  the  Revolution — "  liberalism 
in  literature  "  ?  Is  it  simply,  in  Hugo's  own  words,  "  everything 
j  within  everything  "  ?  Of  such  definitions  there  is  no  end.  But 
Romanticism  is  a  historical  movement,  and  the  safest  way  of 
describing  it  is  to  compare  and  contrast  it  with  what  preceded 
and  followed. 

What  the  Romanticists  objected  to  in  Classicism  was  the 
excess  of  abstraction  and  generality,  the  lack  of  a  personal  and 
spontaneous  element.  To  the  Romanticists,  their  successors — 
the  Parnassians  in  poetry,  the  Realists  in  the  novel  and  the 
drama — reproached  their  lack  of  self-restraint  and  objective 
calm,  their  passionate  individualism,  which  made  all  their  works 
the  revelation  and  glorification  of  Self.  The  inspiration  of  the 
Romantic  movement  was  subjective  ;  it  spurned  the  objective 
checks  of  tradition,  common  sense,  or  scientific  prudence.  And 
this  led  naturally  to  the  supremacy  of  imagination  in  the 
intellectual  world,  of  instinct  in  the  moral,  of  mysticism  in 
the  spiritual. 

"  A  hypertrophy  of  the  Ego,"  such  was  French  Romanticism 


120      FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

from  the  first,  in  its  ancestor  Rousseau  as  well  as  in  its  earliest  com- 
plete exponent,  Chateaubriand.  Hence  the  exalted  pride  common 
to  all  these  men,  so  striking  even  in  the  sanest  and  most  reserved 
of  them  all,  Vigny.  Hence  their  spiritual  isolation  from  the  rest 
of  a  world  which  they  despised  ;  hence  their  melancholy,  born  of 
that  aloofness,  cultivated  as  a  sentimental  treasure  and  as  a  new 
proof  of  their  superiority.  In  politics  and  in  religion,  Royalism 
and  Catholicism  were  but  the  gorgeous  cloaks  of  their  aristocratic 
anarchism.  In  order  to  arrive  at  a  comprehensive  definition  of 
what  is  known  in  history  as  the  spirit  of  1848,  and  which  we 
take  to  be  Romanticism  applied  to  politics  and  religion,  we  must 
endeavour  to  explain  by  what  inner  development,  and  under 
what  influences,  Romanticism  passed  from  its  first  attitude  of 
individualism,  pessimism,  and  conservation  to  its  later  attitude 
of  humanitarianism,  optimism,  and  progress.* 

In  such  a  change,  the  mere  influence  of  age  is  undeniable : 
anarchism  is  a  youthful  dream,  from  which  reality  awakens  us. 
But  if  the  lapse  of  years  explains  the  wane  of  Romanticism, 
it  does  not  explain  its  transformation.  We  understand  how  a 
shaggy  poet  of  1830,  loud  in  his  declarations  of  universal  revolt 
and  hurling  defiance  at  mankind  in  general,  might  turn  into  a 
sober  and  peaceable  citizen  and  crop  his  mane  into  decency 
before  it  be  streaked  with  grey.  But  the  change  in  the  leading 
Romanticists  did  not  imply  any  cooling  off";  most  of  them  were 
as  ardently  enthusiastic — although  in  another  cause — in  1848 
as  in  1830.     Their  temperament  remained  the  same. 

Perhaps  the  opposition  between  their  two  successive  doctrines 
is  not  so  radical  as  it  appears  at  first.     The  germ  of  latter-day 

•  Many  passages  in  this  chapter  will  perhaps  seem  to  be  out  of  place  in  a 
study  of  religious  thought,  as  they  refer  chiefly  to  social  doctrines  and  events. 
It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  decline  of  Catholicism  throughout  the 
eighteenth  and  part  of  the  nineteenth  centuries  had  "  released,"  to  use  a 
chemical  term,  a  vast  amount  of  religious  feeling  which,  seeking  a  support, 
combined  with  political  and  social  aspirations.  Romantic  Democracy  not 
only  had  its  religious  side,  but  it  was  in  itself  a  religion,  and  a  substitute  for 
the  traditional  Churches.  On  the  other  hand,  the  apparent  recrudescence 
of  Catholicism  was  greatly  due  to  political  causes.  There  is  more  Christianity 
as  the  term  is  generally  understood  in  this  country,  in  the  free-thinking 
Socialism  of  G.  Sand  than  in  the  orthodoxy  of  Mgr.  Dupanloup.  (Cf.  her 
letters  to  Mazzini  and  Louis  Napoleon,  Corr.,  iii.) 


V 


ROMANTIC   HUMANITARIANISM  121 

democratic  humanitarianism  is  found  in  the  most  individualistic 
and  aristocratic  works  of  the  earlier  period.  Vigny's  Moses  is 
alone  in  his  glory,  proud  and  melancholy,  but  he  is  a  leader 
of  the  people.  The  Black  Doctor's  advice  to  Stello  is  **  Alone 
and  free,  to  accomplish  one's  mission."  The  notion  of  leader- 
ship, of  a  mission,  implies  an  altruistic,  a  social  element. 

How  could  thoroughgoing   individualists   imagine   that  they 
had   a   mission  ?     If  they   delighted   in    the   spontaneous,  the 
original,  the  unique,  what  could  they  teach,  and  whither  could 
they  lead  ?     Subjectivity  and  relativity  are  as  a  rule  so  closely 
linked   together   that   we  can    hardly   dissociate   them   in    our 
minds  :  personal  inspiration  is  only  of  personal  value.     Yet  for 
the  Romanticists  the  first  term  did  not  imply  the  second.     Thoy 
scorned  objective  limitations,  authorities,  methods  ;  they  wanted 
to   follow  naught  but  the  dictates  of  their  own  hearts ;    they 
craved  for  singularity,   and  not  seldom   sought  the   abnormal ; 
they  had  a  keen  sense,  which  the  pseudo-classicists  lacked,  of 
life's  complexity,  at  least  of  the  varieties  of  its  external  manifes- 
tations.    They  ought  naturally  to  have  come  to  the  conclusion 
that  truth  was  relative.     But,  on  the  contrary,  they  did  not  doubt 
that  they  could  reach,  in  their  independent  way,   conclusions 
of  universal  value.     Influenced   by  the  Catholic  tradition,  by 
classical  rationalism  and  its  belief  in  natural  laws,  they  took 
it   for   granted   that   the   poet's    subjective   inspiration   was   of 
objective  import.     The  poet  sees  intuitively  what  others,  later, 
demonstrate  scientifically.     He  is  a  seer,  a  prophet,  and  there- 
fore  a    leader — a   leader   of  thought,   and   through   thought   a 
leader  of  men. 

Thus  the  French  Romanticists  considered  themselves  as  the 
priests  of  the  Ideal.  Such  a  pretension  may  seem  extravagant ; 
yet  it  gave  strength  and  purpose  to  their  lives,  and  saved  them 
from  mere  Byronic  despair.  They  thought  they  could  move  the 
world  :  such  faith  was  not  so  absurd  then  as  it  may  appear 
to  some  modern  critics.  The  glorification  of  Rousseau  and 
Voltaire  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  was  still  in  every- 
body's memory :  here  were  two  men,  of  mediocre,  or  even 
humble,  origin,  who,  by  the  sheer  power  of  their  genius,  were 
supposed  to  have  shaken  the  most  ancient  monarchy  in  Europe, 


122      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

and  Christianity  itself.  The  harm  these  evil  prophets  had  done, 
could  not  other  prophets  repair  ?  Was  not  Chateaubriand  the 
co-restorer  of  the  Church  and  a  king-maker  ?  The  formidable 
shock  of  the  French  Revolution,  the  fabulous  rise  of  Napoleon, 
led  men  to  believe  that  their  wildest  dreams  might  come  true. 
Thus  French  Romanticism,  the  cult  of  the  Ego,  far  from  avoid- 
ing the  burning  problems  of  the  times,  asserted  itself  as  a 
militant  influence.  Subjective  in  its  inspiration,  it  became 
social  in  its  manifestations.  Needless  to  say  that  the  mission  of 
the  poets  rested  on  an  illusion.  The  leaders  were  led,  the 
prophets  were  echoes,  and  the  revelation  they  found  in  their 
hearts  had  been  imparted  long  before  to  politicians  and  journal- 
ists. But  the  illusion  as  a  rule  was  sincere,  so  sincere  that  it 
could  stand  the  shock  of  repeated  conversions  on  the  part  of  the 
prophets.  Whatever  they  believed,  they  belie-ved  intensely ; 
they  ascended  more  than  one  Sinai,  returning  with  several 
conflicting  Laws  :  but  their  faith  in  their  inspiration  remained 
unshaken. 

It  is  true  that  with  all  their  early  affectation  of  aloofness  they 
loved  popularity,  and  their  desire  for  applause  facilitated,  if  it 
did  not  determine,  some  of  their  changes.  But  this  is  only  a 
small  aspect  of  the  truth :  on  the  whole,  these  men  were  not 
flatterers  and  time-servers.  Especially  under  the  Second 
Empire,  their  independence  is  beyond  doubt :  all  of  them  were 
in  opposition — an  opposition  not  merely  to  a  regime,  but  to  a 
clearly  expressed  and  overwhelming  verdict  of  public  opinion ; 
some  of  them  spent  eighteen  years  in  exile.  In  the  choice  of  a 
creed — political  or  religious — they  were  guided  neither  by  reason 
nor  by  interest,  but  by  imagination  and  sentiment. 
-  And  this  leads  us  to  a  graver  charge  against  the  Romanticists 
as  leaders  of  thought :  sentiment,  especially  in  authors,  will 
easily  turn  to  sentimentalism.  When  emotion  is  enjoyed  for  its 
own  sake,  life  becomes  a  sort  of  comedy,  half-consciously  played 
by  the  poet  for  the  world  and  for  himself.  This  element  was 
strong  in  Chateaubriand,  at  all  stages  of  his  career,  and  in  all 
his  brood  after  him.  We  may  fully  recognise  the  justice  and 
strength  of  this  accusation  without  dismissing  Romantic  thought 
as  deficient  in   seriousness.      Even   in  the   case  of  the  worst 


ROMANTIC   HUMANITARIANISM  123 

offender  in  that  line,  Chateaubriand,  there  was  earnestness 
mingled  with  his  make-believe.  The  Komanticists  chose  a 
creed  because  of  the  feelings  it  aroused  in  them,  and  these 
feelings  they  enjoyed  to  the  full :  but  their  emotions  were 
genuine  all  the  same,  and,  as  a  rule,  noble  and  inspiring.  For 
these  poets,  a  gush  of  sentiment  was  a  reason ;  common  sense 
and  justice  must  yield  to  sympathy,  admiration,  pity ;  love  is  a 
law  unto  itself ;  faith  is  justified  by  its  own  fervour  :  all  this  is 
delusive  and  dangerous,  no  doubt ;  yet  it  has  ever  been  the 
foundation  of  faith.  And  unless  one  accept  a  historical 
revelation,  the  only  alternative  to  emotional  religion  is 
Voltairianism. 

At  first.  Legitimism  linked  with  Catholicism  appealed  to  the 
Romanticists.  No  wonder :  Revolution  and  Empire  were  still 
discredited  by  their  excesses  and  failure  ;  the  only  other  choice 
was  shallow  Liberalism,  coupled  with  shallower  Voltairianism, 
and  expressed  in  insipid  pseudo-classical  literature.  Compared 
with  these  mummies  of  an  enlightened  age,  reaction  had  the 
freshness  of  youth  combined  with  the  majesty  of  centuries.  It 
opened  a  splendid  backward  vista,  and  called  forth  loyalty, 
heroism,  all  the  knightly  virtues.  Soon,  however,  our  noble 
poets  realised  that  Louis  XVIII.  was  not  St.  Louis,  nor 
Charles  X.  Charlemagne.  Their  imagination  had  carried  them 
back  to  fanciful  mediaeval  times ;  but  the  restored  sovereigns 
were  men  of  the  eighteenth  century,  who  had  learnt  nothing  and 
forgotten  nothing.  Old,  unheroic  kings,  who  had  never  fought 
for  their  own  cause,  nor  even  encouraged  their  champions  ; 
a  Constitution  imported  from  England ;  a  humiliating  peace, 
unbroken  save  by  the  inglorious  war  in  Spain  :  this  was  enoii^lr, 
to  breed  disenchantment.  There  are  already  signs  of  such  a^ 
feeling  in  Vigny's  Trappiste  (1822)  and  in  his  Cinq-Mars^ 
(1826).  Chateaubriand  himself,  before  the  Revolution  of  1830,  " 
had  lost  faith  in  the  Government  of  his  own  making.  The 
restoration  was  but  the  shadow  of  the  old  regime,  and  that 
regime  itself,  with  its  centralisation  and  its  army  of  middle- 
class  officials,  had  little  in  common  with  the  feudalism  of 
their  dreams. 

It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  Catholicism  seemed  indissolubly 


124      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

linked  with  legitimism  ;  that  the  Romanticists  had  come  to  their 
religious  faith  at  the  same  time  and  for  the  same  reasons  as  to 
their  political  allegiance ;  and  that  their  gradual  estrangement 
from  the  old  Church  was  parallel  with  their  estrangement  from 
the  old  monarchy.  The  Revolution  of  1830  helped  them  to 
realise  the  change  which  had  taken  place  in  their  hearts.  For 
another  decade,  their  imagination  will  linger  fondly  on  mediaeval 
lore  :  but  they  are  more  and  more  absorbed  in  thoughts  of  the 
present.  They  are  still  lovers  of  the  past ;  they  no  longer  are 
what  Ballanche  called  de  Maistre,  "  prophets  of  the  past." 

Had  democracy  triumphed  in  1830,  instead  of  being  kept  back 
for  eighteen  years  by  the  Orleanist  compromise,  the  Roman- 
ticists would  probably  have  combated  it.  They  had  a  clear 
notion  of  the  people's  power  ;  they  had  no  great  faith  as  yet  in 
the  people's  ability  to  use  their  power  aright.  "Vox  populi,  vox 
Dei  "  was  not  yet  their  cardinal  dogma.  In  Hernani,  Victor  Hugo 
spoke  eloquently  of  the  people  as  "an  ocean — dark,  unfathom- 
able, uncontrollable,"  with  religious  dread  rather  than  with 
confidence  and  love.  In  Stello,  Vigny  condemned  democracy  as 
well  as  monarchy,  absolute  or  constitutional.  Three  lines  of 
thought  led  them  from  this  state  of  indifference  to  one  of  active 
sympathy :  patriotism,  the  rise  of  the  social  problem,  the  free 
Christianity  of  Lamennais. 

The  national  feeling  is  by  no  means  exclusively  democratic  : 
it  was  strong  among  the  Romanticists  before  the  Revolution  of 
1830.  But  it  happened  that  in  France  the  Bourbons  were  held 
to  be  the  creatures  and  the  tools  of  the  Holy  Alliance,  whilst 
Louis-Philippe  adhered  consistently  to  his  policy  of  non- 
intervention and  peace  at  any  price.  Monarchy  thus  seemed  to 
mean  national  abasement,  whilst  the  Republic  and  the  Empire 
stood  for  glory  and  the  natural  frontiers.  This  patriotic  spirit 
had  not  the  brutality  and  the  selfishness  of  Chauvinism  or 
Jingoism :  it  had  a  higher  ideal  than  national  aggrandisement. 
With  undeniable  good  faith,  the  French  made  a  distinction 
between  their  own  victories,  their  own  conquests,  which  were  the 
triumph  of  civilisation  and  progress,  and  the  victories  of  the 
Allies — the  triumph  of  reaction.  This  was  not  wholly  an 
illusion ;  or  if  it  was,  it   was   shared   by  the   liberal   element 


ROMANTIC   HUMANITARIANISM  125 

among  their  very  enemies.  Their  patriotism,  although 
aggi'essive,  was  ennobled  by  its  connections  with  the  universal 
principles  of  1789.  If  war  was  desired,  it  was  as  a  crusade, 
and  annexation  to  France  was  thought  to  mean  redemption  from 
tyranny.  All  oppressed  nations  struggling  for  their  indepen- 
dence had  the  warmest  sympathy  of  the  French  patriots — Greece 
first  of  all,  from  1820  to  1830 ;  then  Belgium,  Ireland,  Italy  ; 
later  Hungary,  and  especially  Poland.  Russia  and  Austria 
were  at  the  same  time  the  representatives  of  conservatism  in 
Europe  and  the  worst  oppressors  of  suffering  nationalities  :  thus 
the  two  conceptions  of  liberty — national  freedom  from  a  foreign 
yoke,  political  freedom  from  an  autocratic  government — became 
more  and  more  closely  associated.  Patriotism,  democracy, 
international  brotherhood  were  united  in  a  generous  and  mystic 
synthesis. 

The  second  element  in  Romantic  Humanitarianism  was 
Socialism  in  its  widest  sense,  a  feeling  of  love  and  pity  for  the 
most  numerous  and  poorest  class,  a  desire  to  help  them  out  of 
their  ignorance  and  misery.  The  social  problem,  such  as  we 
understand  it,  was  practically  unknown  in  France  before  1830. 
Its  rise  was  due  to  changing  economic  conditions,  to  the  first 
developments  of  modern  industry  and  capitalism,  and  to  the 
growth  of  the  democratic  spirit.  The  crisis  which  attended  the 
Revolution  of  1830  caused  the  first  labour  insurrection  at  Lyons, 
with  its  threatening  motto  :  *'  To  live  working  or  to  die  fighting." 
This  created  a  deep  impression.  France  became  aware  of  the 
presence  within  her  borders  of  a  class,  a  whole  people,  driven  to 
despair  by  economic  oppression.  The  sympathy  which  the 
Romanticists  extended  so  freely  to  all  victims  and  to  all  rebels, 
whether  individuals,  classes,  or  nations,  never  was  enlisted  in  a 
worthier  cause.  Here  were  apparent  injustice  and  undeserved 
suftering ;  love  and  help  were  needed.  Hearts  were  moved, 
imaginations  set  on  fire.  The  explanations  ofi"ered  by  political 
economists  seemed  sordid  and  cruelly  insufficient.  On  the 
contrary,  the  Saint- Simonians,  with  their  strange  mixture  of 
industrialism,  mysticism,  and  fraternity,  appealed  to  them ; 
even  Fourier,  obscure  and  childish  though  he  is,  had  his  share 
of  influence.     As  for  Leroux  and  Reynaud,  they  were  so  closely 


126      FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

connected  with  Romanticism  that  no  serious  history  of  the  move- 
ment can  afford  to  ignore  them.  /  Yet,  interested  as  they  were 
in  social  problems,  the  Romanticists  did  not  unreservedly  accept 
the  vague,  Utopian  schemes  propounded  in  their  days  under  the 
name  of  Socialism.  Lamennais  and  Lamartine  even  denounced 
the  whole  system  as  too  materialistic.  Their  sympathy  with  the 
tendency  remained  imaginative  and  sentimental. ; 

(A  third  element  in  the  religion  of  the  Romanticists  was  the 
Christian  tradition.  All  of  them  lost  their  faith  in  Catholicism 
in  the  first  few  years  of  Louis-Philippe's  reign.*  Yet  with  their 
mystic  and  sentimental  tendencies  they  could  not  return  to  the 
cold,  unimaginative  materialism  of  the  eighteenth  century  nor  be 
satisfied  with  the  Hegelianised  Voltairianism  of  the  Eclecticists.\ 
Christian  traditions  and  dogmas  had  become  legends,  myths,  or 
symbols  to  them,  but  their  imagination  remained  deeply  Christian. 
Lamennais,  for  many  years  a  priest  and  a  power  in  the  Church, 
with  the  spirituality  of  a  Breton  and  the  sombre  violence  of  a 
revolutionist,  wrote  his  Words  of  a  Believer  immediately  after 
his  condemnation ;  in  this  wonderful  and  inspired  pastiche  t 
he  struck  the  note  which  all  Romanticists  were  more  or  less  to 
re-echo.  Like  a  Hebrew  prophet,  he  denounced  the  oppressors 
of  the  people,  the  kings,  the  priests,  the  callous  rich.  He 
clothed  democracy  and  free-thought  in  the  magnificence  and 
earnestness  of  Biblical  language. 

Not  the  style  alone  was  Christian :  the  teachings  of  Jesus, 
freely  interpreted,  freely  applied  to  contemporary  problems, 
were  still  the  dominant  influence  :  a  spirit  of  love,  even  in  its 
denunciations;  of  faith,  even  in  the  hours  of  suffering.  Jesus 
was  no  longer  the  theological  entity  worshipped  according  to 
rites,  in  churches  of  wood  and  stone,  by  salaried  priests — but 
the  Master,  the  Friend  of  the  poor,  the  Lover  of  justice,  the 
Redresser  of  wrongs — and,  in  boldly  modern  terms,  the  King 
of  democrats,  the  Messiah  of  Humanitarianism. 

But   the  other  Democrats  and   Romanticists   had   not   been 

*  Cf.  Musset's  "  Je  ne  crois  plus,  6  Christ!  en  ta  parole  sainte";  Vigny, 
Journal  d'un  Poete. 

t  The  application  of  Apocalyptic  style  to  modern  problems  was  already 
strikingly  exemplified  in  Vigny's  Paris  (1831). 


ROMANTIC  HUMANITARIANISM  127 

so  thoroughly  Christianised  as  Lamennais  ;  while  adopting  his 
language,  they  gave  it  a  more  symbolical  value.  ;  In  their 
struggle  against  the  Church,  the  Humanitarians  fought  side 
by  side  with  men  very  different  from  themselves,  but  even 
more  anti-clerical,  the  Voltairians  and  the  Eclecticists.J 
Without  adopting  their  scofiing  attitude,  or  their  shallow  and 
heterogeneous  philosophy,  they  could  not  but  feel  their  influence. 
/Without  becoming  anti-Christians,  they  extended  the  notions 
/  of  inspiration  and  Messianism,  hitherto  the  monopoly  of  the 
M3hristian  tradition,^  to  all  the  great  and  good  men  who  were 
*'  the  Fathers  of  human  thought."  And,  reverting  perhaps  to 
the  Jewish  conception  of  a  chosen  people,  or  continuing  the 
Catbolic  tradition  still  accepted  by  de  Maistre — Gesta  Dei  iier 
Francos— {they  applied  to  France  many  of  the  Messianic  attri- 
butes^i  as  the  Christians  had  applied  to  Jesus  the  passages 
referring  to  the  ideal  Israel  in  the  prophets.  France  had  a 
mission,  a  gospel,  the  "  Eights  of  Man,"  through  w^hich  she 
/  would  redeem  the  w^orld.  She  was  *'a  Christ  among  nations," 
and  Paris  was  the  new  Jerusalem,  t  Thus  were  patriotism, 
democracy,  and  the  Christian  ideal  of  brotherhood,  service, 
and  sacrifice  combined  into  one  faith." 

But  patriotism,  the  love  and  service  of  France  as  the  modern 
Messiah,  w^as  not  a  final  term  :  the  success  of  the  mission — 
all  nations  delivered  through  the  Rights  of  Man — implied  the 
absorption  of  the  deliverer  herself  into  the  rest  of  the  enfran- 
chised family.  Universal  brotherhood  was  the  end.  Then  the 
whole  of  mankind,  equal  and  free,  would  be  conscious  of  its 
Divine  essence :  for  the  Incarnate  Word  of  God,  figured 
eminently  in  Christ  Jesus  and  other  Messiahs,  yet  is  no 
individual  man,  race,  or  nation,  but  the  collective  Being  of 
whom  all  are  members,  Humanity.  I 

The  humanitarian  faith  therefore  stood  for  the  unity  of 
the    race :     within    the    nation    (liberty,    equality,    fraternity 

*  E.g.,  in  1844  :  Cousin,  Villemain,  Libri,  G(5nin,  the  Constitutional  on 
the  one  hand  ;  Lamennais,  George  Sand,  Michelet,  Quinet  on  the  other. 

t  As  stated  before,  these  ideas  were  accepted  by  a  number  of  foreigners, 
even  for  a  while  by  the  great  mocker,  Heine.     Cf.  Englische  Fra<jmente. 

\  Cf.  Lamartine,  Ode  a  M.  de  Genoude,  Rccucillements :  "  Lc  Verbe  est 
fait  humanity  "—almost  a  metaphysical  pun. 


128      FEENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

among  citizens) ;  ^  througliout  the  world  (liberty,  equality, 
fraternity  among  nations)  ;  and  througliout  all  generations 
(mystic  oneness  of  Humanity).  It  also  stood  for  Eeason,  by 
which  was  meant  the  growing  consciousness  of  the  collective 
Mind ;  and  for  Progress  :  Mankind  as  one  Being  was  like  an 
immortal  man  learning  and  advancing  in  spite  of  obstacles 
and  partial  defeats.  But  Keason  and  Progress  as  understood 
by  the  Romanticists  were  very  different  indeed  from  what  the 
Voltairians  meant  by  the  same  terms,  i.e.  "  common  sense  " 
and  material  improvements.  These  notions  of  reason,  liberty, 
and  progress  were  not  seldom  curiously  combined  with  linger- 
ing traces  of  the  earlier  conceptions — mysticism,  authority, 
and  the  Fall.\ 

Humanitarianism  was  the  main  element  in  the  religion  of 
the  Romanticists.  Another,  secondary  but  not  negligible,  was 
Nature- worship.  When  they  were  still  individualists  and 
Christians,  the  poets  saw  in  Nature  either  an  extension  of 
their  personality,  a  mirror  or  a  foil  for  their  changing  moods, 
or  "  the  handiwork  of  God  declaring  His  glory."  As  their 
spirit  became  more  social  and  less  theistic,  they  considered 
Nature  as  one  of  the  manifestations  of  Universal  Life  and  its 
substratum,  and  therefore  as  a  revelation  of  God  rather  than 
as  a  creation  distinct  from  Himself.  Under  Hegelian  influences 
— direct  in  the  case  of  Quinet,  through  Cousin  for  the  others — 
they  reached  the  conception  of  "  a  God  triune,  at  the  same 
time  God,  Nature,  and  Humanity."  The  development  of 
Romanticism  in  the  direction  of  pantheistic  naturalism  is  much 
more  clearly  marked  after  than  before  1848J 

Such  was,  in  its  outlines,  the  religion  of  the  great  Roman- 
ticists in  the  closing  years  of  Louis-Philippe's  reign.  We 
need  hardly  say  that  it  never  was  formulated  as  a  hard  and 
fast  system.*  As  a  metaphysical  effort,  it  was  as  vague  and 
contradictory  as  all  genuine  religions.  We  are  aware,  not 
only  of  the  differences  among  Romanticists,  but  of  the  incessant 
variations  of  any  one  writer,  torn  between  individualism  and 
Socialism,  between  the  Fall  and  progress,  between  mysticism 
and  reason,  between  orthodoxy  and  free-thought,  between  the 

*  Best  in  Leroux,  De  VHumanite,  1840  ;  George  Sand,  Spiridion,  1839. 


ROMANTIC   HUMANITARIANISM  129 

old  and  the  new.  Yet  the  general  tendency  is  unmistakable  ; 
the  attitude  of  Lamennais,  Lamartine,  Hugo,  Vigny,  George 
Sand,  Michelet,  Qninet,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  Saint- 
Simonians,  Leroux,  Rcynaud,  even  Proudhon,  even  Cabet,  on 
the  other,  is  the  same.  It  had  all  the  elements  of  a  religion 
— faith,  hope,  and  charity.  To  the  outsider,  we  should  say 
the  unbeliever,  like  Thackeray,*  it  offered  a  monstrous  com- 
bination of  silly  Jingoism,  demagogy,  sentimentalism,  with  a 
blasphemous  transposition  of  Christian  symbols  :  but  scoffing 
scepticism  provides  the  surest  means  of  misunderstanding  a 
generous  movement.  To  innumerable  young  men,  a  noble 
generation,  the  last  of  whom  are  still  with  us,  it  was  a  living 
faith,  with  its  dreams  of  beauty,  its  call  to  heroism,  unselfish- 
ness, and,  if  need  be,  martyrdom. 

2.  Michelet. 

February,  1848,  saw  the  triumph  of  Romantic  Humani- 
tarianism :  for  a  few  weeks  the  whole  people  seemed  in  tune 
with  the  great  poet,  Lamartine,  who,  by  the  sheer  prestige 
of  his  generous  eloquence,  had  become  their  leader.  The 
inexperience  of  the  new  rulers,  the  impatience  of  turbulent  \ 
democrats  like  Barbes  and  Blanqui,  the  immature  schemes 
of  innumerable  Utopian  socialists — Considerant,  Cabet,  Leroux, 
Proudhon,  Louis  Blanc,  an  economic  crisis  raging  all  over 
Europe,  the  hostile  attitude  of  the  provinces,  which  had 
accepted  the  Parisian  revolution  with  sullen  diffidence — all 
this  dispelled  the  dream  of  an  immediate  millennium.  A 
terrible  socialistic  insurrection,  still  fresh  in  the  popular  mind 
as  "  the  Days  of  June,"  was  suppressed  by  Cavaignac  with 
the  brutal  energy  of  a  soldier  trained  in  Algerian  campaigns. 
Society  trembled  retrospectively  and  clamoured  for  a  saviour. 
Idealism  was  doomed.  In  December,  1848,  Louis-Napoleon 
was  elected  President  of  the  Republic  ;  in  December,  1851,  he 
made  himself  Dictator ;  in  December,  1852,  he  was  crowned 
Emperor  of  the  French. 

Now  Louis-Napoleon  was  himself  a  Romantic  Humanitarian, 

•  Paris  Sketch  Book. 

9 


130   FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

a  dreamer,  a  socialist,  the  champion  of  oppressed  nationalities, 
and  a  Caesarean  democrat :  perhaps  he  saved  more  of  the  ideal 
of  1848  than  any  other  regime,  and  especially  a  conservative 
Republic,  could  have  done.  But  this  was  not  realised  at  the 
time.  Napoleon  was  the  elect  of  the  Conservatives ;  his  Coup 
d'Etat  was  an  act  of  violence  and  fraud ;  Republican  leaders 
were  imprisoned  or  exiled ;  a  craving  for  wealth  and  luxury 
became  the  ruling  passion  of  French  society.  Thus  all  those 
who  had  hailed  with  joy  the  pure  dawn  of  the  Second  Republic 
considered  themselves,  under  the  Second  Empire,  as  defeated, 
disowned,  spiritually  exiled.  Lamennais,  in  some  respect  the 
master  of  them  all,  a  prophet  twice  fallen,  spent  the  short 
remainder  of  his  life  in  obscurity,  until  that  cold  and  misty 
day  in  March,  1854,  when,  amid  an  immense  and  sombre 
crowd,  between  threatening  lines  of  soldiers,  his  body  was 
carried,  unchurched,  to  the  nameless  grave  of  the  poor. 
Lamartine  dragged  his  chain  until  1869-  Infinitely  sad  was 
the  long  martyrdom  of  this  man — the  growing  solitude,  the 
jeers  or  the  indifference  of  the  new  generation,  the  drudgery, 
the  sordid  daily  battle  with  poverty.  Never  was  '*  Vae  Victis  !  " 
repeated  with  more  pitiless  insistence.  George  Sand,  too, 
suffered  deeply :  but  she  issued  from  the  ordeal  chastened, 
yet  unconquered.  Her  faith  turned  into  a  strong,  quiet, 
patient  meliorism,  unshaken  by  the  spectacle  or  the  prospect 
of  temporary  reactions,  no  longer  made  feverish  by  the  hope 
of  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth  close  at  hand.  And  in  the 
uneventful  tenor  of  her  life  after  the  storms  of  her  romantic 
career  were  over,  her  gentle  personality  revealed  itself  in  all  its 
beauty — with  her  modesty,  her  simplicity,  the  sanity  of  her 
mind,  the  kindness  of  her  heart,  and  that  peace  which  is  a 
reward  and  a  lesson.  Quinet,  like  George  Sand,  grew  inwardly 
as  a  result  of  his  party's  defeat :  his  vague  humanitarianism 
deepened  into  an  almost  puritanical  religion  of  conscience.  We 
should  like  to  dwell  on  the  trials  of  these  noble  souls,  who,  in 
spite  of  many  weaknesses,  were  faithful  servants  of  the  ideal; 
we  should  like  to  linger  a  while  with  their  friends,  often 
their  inspirers,  Jean  Reynaud  and  his  Earth  and  Heaven^ 
Leroux  and   his  Beach  of  Samarez,  Barrault   and   his  Christ, 


ROMANTIC   HUMANITARIANISM  131 

Enfantin    and    his    Eternal    Life,    and,    among    the   younger 
generation,   Eugene  Pelletan.     But  the  evohition  of  Romantic 
Humanitarianism  will   be  clear  enough  if  we  limit   our   study 
to   the   greatest   representatives   of  the   school,    Michelet   and  ■ 
Victor  Hugo. 

The  names  of  Quinet  and  Michelet  are  inseparable.  The  two 
men  were  united  by  fifty  j-ears  of  "heroic  friendship."  Their 
starting-point  was  the  same :  in  1827  Quinet  translated  Herder 
and  Michelet  Vico,  and  these  philosophies  of  history  perma- 
nently influenced  their  thought,  gave  them  their  living  faith  in 
human  progress.  Both  were  ardent  democrats,  both  free- 
thinking  mystics.  In  the  name  of  progress,  democracy, 
free-thought,  and  religion,  both  declared  war  on  Roman 
Catholicism,  turned  the  old  College  de  France  into  a  charch 
of  the  new  Reformation,  and  published  jointly  their  lessons 
on — or  against — The  Jesuits  (1843).  Both  were  deprived 
of  their  professorships  by  the  Napoleonic  reaction,  and  the 
present  Republic  honours  them  both,  with  Victor  Hugo,  as 
its  prophets,  its  sponsors,  and  its  spiritual  leaders. 

We  have  already  studied  Edgar  Quinet,  the  Huguenot  without 
a  creed.  No  school,  no  Church  can  claim  the  mobile,  ardent, 
and  tender  soul  of  Michelet.  He  ignored  or  despised  abstrac- 
tions, formulie,  dogmas :  he  was  all  life  and  love.  "  Other 
[historians],"  he  said,  "were  more  brilliant,  more  judicious, 
more  profound:  I  loved  more."  Individuals,  nations,  nature, 
were  alike  alive  to  him.  They  lived  again  in  him  ;  his  soul 
would  thrill  at  the  recital  of  their  sufferings  or  of  their 
happiness ;  he  lived  again  in  them :  he  lent  them  his  passions, 
his  aspirations.  Every  one  of  his  books  was  a  "resurrection," 
or  an  interpretation,  of  life.  Of  every  one  could  be  said  what 
he  wrote  on  the  front  page  of  The  People  :  "  This  is  myself." 

Thus  Michelet,  perhaps  the  most  subjective  of  all 
Romanticists,  was  at  the  same  time  the  least  egotistic. 
His  personality  was  ever  present,  but  ever  in  the  form  of 
unselfish  sympathy.  He  was  not  infected  with  Chateaubriand's 
melancholy,  because  he  knew  neither  the  gloom  of  moral  isola- 
tion nor,  like  Vigny,  "  the  burden  of  greatness."  Fully 
conscious  of  his  own  powers,  free  from  shrinking  self-diffidence, 


132     FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

he  was  yet,  like  George  Sand,  without  pretence  and  without 
vanity.  This  simplicity  of  heart,  a  rare  virtue  among  writers 
in  our  sophisticated  age,  saved  him  from  the  first  danger  that 
menaces  whoever  bases  his  philosophy  on  love  :  sentimentalism. 
So  sincere  was  he,  so  true  of  soul,  that  in  his  thousand  pages 
of  lyric  effusions  there  are  many  which  are  bizarre,  excessive, 
disconcerting,  even  ridiculous ;  there  is  not  one  that  is  down- 
right mawkish  and  unmanly. 

The  second  danger  which  threatens  too  loving  a  soul  is 
quietism,  repose  in  God,  a  kind  of  mystic  optimism  that  kills 
energy.  Michelet  was  born  in  poverty,  and  rose  in  life  through 
superhuman  efforts  on  his  parents'  part  and  on  his  own.  He 
was  a  son  of  the  Revolution  and  saw  the  Great  Empire.*  Thus 
his  own  experience  and  that  of  his  country  taught  him  to  believe 
in  the  necessity  and  the  virtue  of  effort.  The  first  characteristic 
of  religion,  in  his  mind,  was  that  faith  which  prompts  to  action. 
"  Will  and  Power  are  one.  Whoever  ivills,  strongly,  con- 
tinuously, and  in  spite  of  everything,  conquers  every  obstacle."  t 
His  religion  was  not  contemplative,  beatific,  but  militant. 

Love  has  a  third  danger  :  its  arbitrariness.  Love  is  bound  by 
no  law ;  it  effaces  the  distinction  between  good  and  evil ;  it  ruins 
justice.  Romanticism,  at  a  certain  period  of  its  development, 
seemed  disposed  to  sacrifice  everything  to  the  rights  of  passion  : 
now,  for  Michelet,  the  ideals  of  justice  and  love  were  inseparable. 
Justice  was  the  supreme  crown  of  love,  and  love  the  flower  of 
justice.  In  this  puzzling,  incomplete  world  of  ours,  apparent 
conflicts  between  the  two  are  not  impossible :  in  such  a  case, 
Michelet  would  unhesitatingly  take  the  side  of  justice.  If  he 
admired  the  Revolution  it  was  for  its  "  profoundly  pacific,  kindly, 
humane  spirit,"  no  doubt,  I  but  chiefly  because  it  was  the  "  advent 
of  law,  the  resurrection  of  Right,  the  reaction  of  Justice."  § 
The  same  criterion  will  be  applied  to  Christianity:  "  [The  ques- 
tion is]  to  know  whether  the  dogma  of  Grace  and  Salvation 
through  Christ,  the  only  basis  of  Christianity,  can  be  reconciled 
with  Justice ;  to  know  whether  this  dogma  is  just,  and  will 
stand."     And  as  Reason  is  but  the  way  to  Truth,  and  Justice 

*  Born  1798.  t  Une  Annie  au  ColUge  de  France,  506. 

I  B6volution,  Preface,  1847.  §  Ibid.,  i.  1. 


ROMANTIC  HUMANITARIANISM  133 

but  Truth  in  action,  Michelet  worshipped  '*  at  the  altar  of 
Right  and  Truth  and  eternal  Reason,  which  has  .  .  .  not  lost 
one  stone."  *  "  Identical  in  all  ages,  on  the  firm  foundation  of 
Nature  and  history.  Eternal  Justice  shines."  f 

The  religion,  not  of  love  alone,  but  of  justice  and  truth  in  the 
spirit  of  love,  and  of  activity  for  the  sake  of  justice,  such  was 
Michelet' s  faith.  The  centre,  the  foundation  of  it  was  Ic 
foyer,  the  hearth,  a  sacred  and  tender  word  which  "  home  "  does 
not  fully  render.  ''  The  hearth  is  the  stone  upon  which  the  City 
is  builded."  +  It  must  be  pure,  austere,  united:  war  to  any 
system  or  individual  that  w^ould  attempt  to  divide  or  weaken  it ! 
There  the  first  lessons  of  work  and  sacrifice  must  be  learnt ;  there 
must  reign  harmoniously  the  two  principles,  justice  and  love,  em- 
bodied in  the  father  and  the  mother.  Michelet  was  a  man  of  the 
people,  like  Veuillot  and  Proudlion  :  it  is  significant  that  all  three, 
so  radically  difi'erent  in  many  other  respects,  had  the  same  uncom- 
promising devotion  to  the  family  altar.  This  devotion  is  evident 
everywhere  in  Michelet' s  life  and  writings.  It  was  the  origin,  it 
remains  the  saving  grace,  of  his  strange  books  U Amour  (Love), 
La  Femme  (Woman),  so  often  condemned  equally  by  Gallic 
levity  and  Saxon  prudishness.  It  was  the  basis  of  his  treatise 
on  education,  Nos  Fils  (Our  Sons).  On  the  sanctity  of  marriage, 
the  integrity  of  the  home,  the  Catholic  journalist,  the  socialist 
polemist,  the  Romantic  historian  were  as  intractable  as  any  old 
Roman  or  any  Puritan. 

The  city  is  but  a  larger  family,  whose  service  requires  the 
same  virtues.  First  of  all  it  must  be  united,  not  by  outward 
compulsion,  but  in  the  bonds  of  love.  And  France  in  the  nine- 
teenth century  was  not  united.  "  Our  boasted  unity,"  said 
Michelet,  "is  superficial.  The  cultured  few  and  the  illiterate 
populace  have  little  in  common."  To  bridge  the  chasm  between 
the  classes  and  the  masses  was  Michelet's  constant  preoccupation. 
Himself  born  among  the  poor,  he  knew  them  well,  and  loved 
them,  for  their  patience  under  hardships  which  he  had  shared  to 
the  full,  and  for  their  pure  ideal  of  brotherly  assistance.  To  his 
students,  sons  of  the  bourgeoisie,  he  preached  the  duty  uf  going 

•  Rdvolution,  Preface,  1868,  11.  f  Bible  de  VUumaniU,  385. 

:  Ibid.,  387. 


134      FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

to  the  people,  simply,  fraternally.  He  felt  that  even  the  best 
intentioned  writers — himself  as  well  as  the  rest—had  left  the 
people  spiritually  unfed  and  unclothed.  As  the  highest  function 
of  the  "  foyer"  is  to  educate  the  child,  the  highest  function  of  the 
State  is  to  educate  the  people.  "  What  is  the  first  part  of 
politics?  Education.  And  the  second  ?  Education,  And  the 
third?  Education  ."  Just  because  he  was  himself  of  humble 
origin,  his  aspirations  for  the  social  betterment  of  the  lower 
classes  were  sane,  moderate,  and  at  the  same  time  idealistic :  it 
is  bourgeois  politicians,  not  the  working  men  themselves,  who 
formulate  in  the  name  of  the  people  Utopian  demands,  Michelet 
was  not  blind  to  the  present  limitations  of  the  poor,  and  he  knew 
that  it  was  not  bread  alone  they  were  craving  for,  but  truth,  jus- 
tice, and  love.* 

The  home  of  this  immense  family  is  France  :  patriotism  is 
with  Michelet  as  with  the  Ancients  an  essential  part  of  religion. 
He  loved  France  passionately,  in  the  harmonious  diversity  of  her 
provinces,  in  her  tragic  and  glorious  past,  in  her  generous  aspira- 
tions, in  her  living  personality.  In  him  the  historian,  the 
patriot,  and  the  prophet  were  inseparable.  On  the  question  oi 
patriotism,  as  on  that  of  the  family,  he  accepted  no  compromise. 
"  Another  religion,"  he  said,  "  the  humanitarian  dream  of  philo- 
sophy, which  believes  that  it  can  save  the  individual  by  destroying 
the  citizen,  by  denying  the  right  of  the  Nation,  by  denouncing  the 
Fatherland,  that  other  religion,  too,  I  have  sacrificed.  The 
Fatherland,  my  Fatherland,  alone  can  save  the  world." 

Yet,  ardent  patriot  though  he  was,  and  opposed  to  inter- 
nationalism, Michelet  was  not  indifferent  to  other  countries.  He 
hailed,  in  1848,  "  the  eagle  of  Poland,  which  has  so  often  bled  for 
us,  the  tricolour  of  Italy — Italia  mater — the  red,  black,  and  gold 
of  Germany,  my  beloved  Germany."  All  nations  are  persons, 
like  France,  sisters  to  be  respected,  and  helped,  and  loved.  All 
will  sit  some  day  at  the  universal  banquet  of  peace.  It  is  true  he 
hated  England  as  much  as  he  loved  Germany :  he  shared  the 
popular  prejudices  of  the  men  of  his  generation,  who  could  not 
forget  Waterloo  and  St.  Helena ;  England  represented  in  his 
eyes   materialistic   strength  and   national   selfishness.    On    the 

*  Cf .  passiiHy  Le  Peuple,  1846 ;  Une  Annie  au  ColUge  de  France,  1847-8. 


ROMANTIC   HUMANITARIANISM  135 

whole  [he  was,  like  Hugo,  Quinet,  Lamartine,   a  humanitarian 
patriot. 

"  My  country  alone  can  save  the  world."  Michelet  believed  in 
the  mission  of  France.  '*  For  the  last  two  centuries,  one  may 
say  that  the  true  Pope  was  France  ;  authority  lies  here,  under 
one  form  or  another  ;  here  is  the  centre  of  Europe,  through 
Louis  XIV.,  Montesquieu,  Voltaire,  and  Rousseau,  through  the 
Constituent  Assembly,  the  Code  and  Napoleon  ;  all  other 
nations  are  eccentric."  France  in  the  eighteenth  century 
formulated  the  creed  of  the  modern  world,  and  the  Revolution 
undertook  its  practical  application. 

In  the  worship  of  the  Revolution,  all  the  tendencies  of 
Michelet' s  thought  united — love  and  justice,  patriotism  and 
humanitarianism.  The  Revolution  was  for  him  the  incarnation 
of  the  French  spirit:  "France  and  Revolution  are  henceforth 
synonymous."  It  was  truly  a  religion  :  it  had  all  the  char- 
acters of  one.  "The  Revolution,  some  one  said  [Quinet?] 
ought  to  have  placed  itself  under  the  banner  of  Luther  or  Calvin. 
I  answer  :  this  would  have  been  an  abdication.  The  Revolution 
adopted  no  Church.  Why?  Because  it  was  itself  a  church."  *  "It 
created  the  faith  that  accomplishes  miracles,  or  rather  for  which 
there  are  no  miracles,  so  simple  do  the  most  superhuman  tasks 
appear.  As  agape,  as  communion,  nothing  in  this  world  was 
ever  comparable  to  the  enthusiasm  of  the  federations  in  1790. 
Sacrifice  in  its  absolute,  its  infinite  grandeur,  the  surrender  of  self 
without  holding  back  anything,  was  seen  in  its  most  sublime  form 
in  the  enthusiasm  of  1792  :  a  sacred  war  on  behalf  of  peace, 
and  for  the  freedom  of  the  world."  t  Whenever  Michelet  spoke 
of  the  Revolution,  it  was  in  tones  of  fervour  and  awe  :  "  What 
am  I,"  he  said,  with  the  mystic  self-abasement  of  a  monk  before 
the  Cross,  "  what  am  I  that  I  should  be  allowed  to  relate 
these  scenes  ?  "  The  Revolution  is  divine,  nay,  it  is  God : 
"...  Justice,  the  new  God,  whose  war-name  here  below  is  the 
Revolution."  I  The  book  which  contains  these  words  appeared 
in  1869,  after  twenty  years  of  materialistic  and  sceptical 
reaction  had  taught  France  to  jeer  at  her  own  past ;  Michelet 

•  Rivolution,  Preface,  11.  t  Ibid.,  Preface,  11-12. 

;  Nos  Fils,  294. 


136     FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

had  spent  seven  years  in  a  close  study  of  his  idol,  yet  his  faith 
was  unshaken. 

The  family ;  the  people ;  the  nation,  France ;  mankind,  as 
the  great  family  of  families  ;  the  Revolution,  as  the  highest 
expression  of  France  and  mankind  in  the  service  of  justice  and 
truth  :  such  were  the  objects  of  Michelet's  adoration.  To  this 
list,  should  we  add  Nature  ?  During  the  Second  Empire,  the 
great  historian  ventured  into  a  new  field,  and  wrote  his  delight- 
ful medleys  of  science,  poetry,  sentiment,  fantasy,  The  Bird 
(1856),  The  Insect  (1857),  The  Sea  (1861),  IVie  Mountain 
(1868).  Sick,  body  and  soul,  after  the  triumph  of  reaction; 
deprived  of  his  professorship,  of  that  contact  with  young  men 
which  had  always  been  such  an  inspiration  to  him ;  exhausted 
by  his  great  efi'ort  in  writing  the  history  of  the  Revolution,  he 
sought  peace,  oblivion,  and  fresh  courage  in  the  heart  of 
nature.  He  was  no  doubt  influenced  also  by  the  immense  pro- 
gress of  natural  sciences  in  the  middle  of  the  century.  But 
Michelet  was  not  strictly  a  nature-worshipper,  a  naturalistic 
pantheist.  What  strikes  him  most  in  nature  is  neither  the 
spectacle  of  its  beauty,  as  in  the  case  of  the  other  Romanticists, 
nor  the  idea  of  inflexible  law,  as  with  the  Positivists.  Natural 
history,  like  human  history,  was  for  him  a  "  psychomachy,V  a 
drama  of  souls.  His  anthropomorphic  imagination  saw  the 
love,  the  struggles,  the  sufferings  of  animals,  and  perhaps  even 
of  the  elements.  He  insisted  on  the  relations  of  nature  to  man 
— the  possibility  of  a  state  of  harmony  rather  than  of  war 
between  the  higher  and  the  lower  creation,  the  usefulness  of 
our  humble  friends  and  fellow- workers,  birds  and  insects,  of  our 
great  doctors,  mountain  and  sea.  These  books  of  the  new 
St.  Francis,  full  of  delicate  observations  and  accurate  de- 
scriptions, are  yet,  first  of  all,  sermons  and  lyrical  poems. 
Michelet  remained  even  in  his  nature  studies  the  apostle  of 
effort  and  love. 

Beyond  and  within  nature  and  mankind,  God ;  God,  as  the 
supreme  realisation  of  justice  and  love,  ''  the  universal  soul  of 
the  worlds,  who  is  but  Truth  and  Justice,  impartial  and 
immutable   Love."  *      Michelet  was  no  metaphysician  and  no 

*  Bible  de  VHumaniU,  387. 


ROMANTIC  HUMANITARIANISM  137 

theologian.  Philosophers  are  not  certain  whether  his  concep- 
tion of  God  as  both  immanent  and  transcendent  should  be 
called  spiritualism  or  pantheism.  Let  them  dispute  :  his  God 
was  the  living  God,  and  a  loving  Father. 

Justice  and  love — righteousness  and  charity  :  is  not  that  the 
whole  of  Christianity?  Michelet,  when  a  child,  read  with 
emotion  the  Imitation  of  Christ ;  he  was  the  reverse  of  a  cold 
rationalist,  of  an  iconoclast ;  he  had  the  true  historical  spirit  of 
respectful  sympathy  for  the  past ;  he  had  ' '  faith  in  faith  and 
the  love  of  love."  He  should  have  been  an  excellent  Christian. 
Yet  from  1843  to  his  death  he  was  an  irreducible  adversary  of 
historical  and  organised  Christianity.  Not  only,  at  a  time  when 
State  education  was  attacked  with  unscrupulous  violence,  did  he 
deliver  and  publish,  in  self-defence,  denunciatory  curses  against 
the  priests  and  the  Jesuits,  but  in  March,  1848,  when  all  was  still 
hope  and  trust,  when  Catholics  and  socialists  fraternised,  he, 
the  apostle  of  national  reconciliation,  was  almost  alone  in  sound- 
ing a  note  of  diffidence  and  warning.* 

There  are  three  things  in  a  religion  :  the  Church,  the 
doctrine,  the  spirit.  The  Church,  in  France,  was  the  Roman 
Catholic.  Now,  this  Church,  in  Michelet's  mind,  was  opposed 
to  his  dearest  objects  of  worship — the  hearth,  the  Revolution. 
The  hearth  :  the  priest,  bound  to  celibacy,  to  an  unnatural  ideal 
of  absolute  chastity,  scorned  family  life,  if  not  as  unholy,  at 
least  as  inferior,  and  was  a  stranger  to  the  most  legitimate  and 
ennobling  affections.  The  father  should  be  a  priest  at  the 
altar  of  his  own  fireside,  and  be  united  with  his  family  in  truest 
soul-communion  ;  but  the  Catholic  intruder,  through  confession, 
robbed  him  of  his  wife's  spiritual  allegiance,  turned  her  against 
him,  divided  that  which  God  had  united.!  The  Revolution  :  the 
Church  had  unequivocally  sided  with  autocracy ;  since  the  con- 
demnation of  Lamennais,  no  doubt  was  possible  :  the  Church  was 
the  centre  of  all  reaction,  of  the  counter-revolution.  1  And  in 
the  very  spirit  of  love  the  Church  was  deficient :  rich,  powerful, 
ambitious,  rebellious  wherever  it  could  not  be  tyrannical,  it  had 
become  hard,  materialistic.     It  was  in  the  name  of  religion,  of 

*   Une  annie  au  ColUgc  de  France,  Le  lendemam  de  la  Revolution,  596. 
t  Du  pretre,  de  la  femme,  et  de  la  famille.  J  Les  J6suitea. 


138      FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

charity,  of  the  ideal  that  Michelet,  like  Quinet,  George  Sand, 
Victor  Hugo,  revolted  against  Kome. 

Michelet  drew  splendid  portraits  of  Luther  and  Calvin. 
Luther,  especially,  so  natural,  so  popular,  active,  sincere, 
merry,  and  tender,  won  his  heart.  But,  different  in  this  respect 
from  Quinet,  he  never  was  in  active  sympathy  with  Protestant- 
ism. The  rival  influences  of  Catholicism  and  eighteenth-century 
philosophy,  which  fought  for  dominion  in  his  soul,  were  so  strong 
that  he  could  not  escape  from  one  without  falling  under  the 
other.  The  Protestants  were  in  close  touch  with  England,  which 
he  hated ;  he  could  not  bear  the  stiffness,  the  coldness,  the 
reactionary  spirit  of  their  best-known  representative,  Cuizot. 
An  orthodox  reformation,  possible  in  the  sixteenth  century,  was 
out  of  the  question  in  the  nineteenth.  Therefore  Catholicism  stood 
as  the  sole  representative  of  Christianity,  and  Michelet's  hostility 
was  extended  from  clericalism  to  theology.  Monarchical  and 
Christian  idolatry,  injustice,  arbitrariness,  favour,  grace,  all,  he 
thought,  were  linked  together  ;  he  detested  them  all  equally.* 

Christianity  and  the  Revolution  agreed  on  the  sentiment  of 
human  brotherhood,  but  the  Revolution  founded  this  sentiment 
"  on  mutual  duty,  on  right,  and  justice,"  Christianity  on  "  a 
doubtful  historical  conception,  the  common  fall  through  Adam, 
the  salvation  of  all  through  Christ."  Grace,  original  sin,  the 
small  number  of  the  elect,  eternal  punishment,  shocked  Michelet's 
sense  of  justice  and  love.  In  his  eyes.  Christian  theology  was 
irreligious.  On  all  points  he  had  a  substitute  for  its  doctrines. 
To  the  creation  in  seven  days  he  opposed  continuous  creation, 
which  excluded  miracles,  but  not  evolution  ;  to  the  Fall,  his  faith 
in  moral  progress,  in  the  slow  ascent  of  man  through  unending 
efforts  ;  to  the  condemnation  of  nature  by  the  mediaeval  Church 
(Rabelais's  A ntiphy sis),  the  rehabilitation  of  all  legitimate  joy, 
the  Greek  ideal  of  life,  ''a  heroic  smile"  ;  to  the  exclusive 
Judeo-Christian  revelation,  the  universal  revelation,  of  which 
each  people  writes  a  chapter,  each  great  poet  a  verse,  ''  the  Bible 
of  Mankind." 

Michelet,  in  his  earlier  writings,  had  paid  full  tribute  to  the 
Christian  ideal.     Under  the  Second   Empire,  his  radical  anti- 

*  Nos  Fils,  29^^ 


ROMANTIC   HUMANITARIANISM  139 

pathy  to  the  Church  made  him  more  sensitive  to  the  excesses, 
the  contradictions,  the  obscurities,  which,  in  his  eyes,  dimmed 
or  marred  the  Divine  character  of  the  Bible.  The  aspiration  to 
more  justice  and  love,  the  glorification  of  sacrifice,  were  not 
specifically  Christian,  but  eternal  and  universal.  The  Hebrew 
revelation,  "  beautiful  and  unsafe,  even  as  Night,"  should  not  be 
deemed  unique  and  exclusive.  "  Mankind  pours  incessantly  its 
soul  into  a  common  Bible.  Every  great  people  wrote  its  verse 
therein."*  Primitive  India  gave  us  the  family  in  its  natural 
purity,  in  its  incomparable  grandeur,  which  no  later  age  could 
surpass  ;  Persia,  a  lesson  of  heroic  labour  ;  Greece,  the  greatest 
of  all  arts,  the  art  of  making  men.  The  hearth,  work,  educa- 
tion :  these  we  owe  to  the  three  great  civilisations,  "  a  trinity  of 
light  and  life,  the  main  current  of  human  thought."  The 
Egyptians,  the  Phoenicians,  the  Jews  were  *'the  lesser  half  of 
mankind,  the  peoples  of  darkness  and  death  "  ;  when  Rome  was 
conquered  by  the  East,  Syrians  and  Jews,  she  declined,  and  her 
decay  made  possible  "  the  centuries  of  terror  and  gloom,"  which 
Michelet  now  hated  as  much  as  he  once  loved  them,  the  Christian 
Middle  Ages. 

**  Jerusalem  can  not  for  ever  remain  the  centre  of  the  world," 
such  is  the  first  conclusion  of  this  survey.  "Let  mankind,  free 
in  its  immensity,  go  everywhere.  Let  men  drink  where  their 
earliest  ancestors  drank.  With  its  enormous  work,  its  tasks 
extending  in  every  direction,  its  titanic  needs,  mankind  must 
have  much  air,  much  water,  much  sky — the  whole  sky  ! — space 
and  light,  infinite  horizons,  the  whole  earth  as  promised  land, 
and  the  world  for  its  Jerusalem."  t 

Such  universal  worship  cannot  be  narrowed  down  to  the  limits 
of  a  local  and  historical  organisation  ;  yet  collective  adoration, 
a  ceremonial,  are  necessary.  Michelet's  ideal  was  the  Greek 
festival :  games,  processions,  the  drama  ;  in  modern  times,  the 
*'  Federation  "  in  1790  and  1791.  On  the  4th  of  March,  1848, 
took  place  a  celebration  in  honour  of  the  dead  of  February. 
With  deep  joy  Michelet  witnessed  the  admirable  spectacle  ;  a 
whole  nation,  pure,  enthusiastic,  fraternal ;  the  flags  of  other 
nations  side  by  side  with  the  French  tricolour.    But  the  Govern- 

•  Bible  de  VHumaniU,  1.  f  Ibid.,  9. 


140     FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

ment  had  the  unfortunate  inspiration  of  holding  the  ceremony  at 
La  Madeleine  (St.  Magdalen's  Church)  :  "I  did  not  go  up.  I 
had  my  church  there,  the  great  church  of  heaven.  I  held  my 
celebration  alone,  under  the  sky,  within  my  heart,  saddened, 
however,  at  the  spectacle  of  France  shrinking  in  order  to  enter 
the  little  tomb."*  *'  We  must  turn  about  quickly,  frankly  turn 
our  back  on  the  Middle  Ages,  on  that  morbid  past,  v/hich,  even 
when  it  does  not  act,  has  a  terrible  influence,  throusfli  the  con- 
tagion  of  death.  We  must  neither  combat  nor  criticise,  but 
forget.     Let  us  forget  and  progress."  t 

But  this  conclusion  is  negative,  and  negation  is  not  Michelet's 
normal  attitude  of  mind.  The  Bible  of  Mankind  ends  with  a 
positive  confession  of  faith,  the  best  summary  of  Michelet's 
religion.  "  The  hearth  is  the  stone  on  which  the  City  is  builded. 
...  It  must  become  again  what  it  used  to  be — an  altar.  ...  In 
the  circle  by  the  fireside  should  be  admitted  all  the  heroes  of 
mankind,  the  great  Church  of  justice.  ...  It  is  illumined  by  a 
reflection  from  the  universal  soul  of  the  worlds — Truth  and  Justice, 
impartial  and  immutable  Love. 

''It  is  this  strong  hearth  that  this  book  would  help  you  build, 
or  at  least  begin.  It  hopes  to  give  you  what  it  so  often  gave  me, 
in  the  course  of  this  long  task,  which  absorbed  me  by  day  and 
woke  me  in  the  night :  a  heart  at  rest  from  all  earthly  trial,  grave 
and  holy  joy,  the  profound  peace  of  light."  I 

Michelet's  religious  philosophy  is  not  systematic  ;  it  can 
neither  be  classified,  discussed,  nor  refuted.  The  only  original 
and  positive  point  about  it,  the  worship  of  the  Revolution,  cannot 
be  fully  appreciated  by  our  generation.  France  was  recovering 
from  the  shock  of  1848  when  the  worse  disasters  of  1870-71 
befell  her ;  sixty  years  of  diffidence  and  discouragement  have 
been  weighing  upon  her  ;  she  is  no  longer  in  tune  with  Michelet's 
heroic  optimism.  She  honours  him,  not  as  a  prophet,  but  as 
a  poet. 

Michelet  was  too  spontaneous,  too  individual  a  thinker  and 
a  writer  to  have  any  real  disciples.     Yet  his  influence  was  gi*eat. 

•  Nos  FilSf  588.    La  Madeleine,  built  in  the  Greco-Roman  style,  in  the 
form  of  a  huge  mausoleum. 
t  Bible  de  VHumaniU,  382.  J  Ibid.,  387. 


ROMANTIC   HUMANITARIANISM  141 

"  Those  of  us  whose  childhood  and  early  youth  were  spent  during 
the  first  twelve  years  of  the  Second  Empire,"  wrote  Gabriel 
Monod,  "  will  ever  remember  the  chill  and  weary  gloom  which 
oppressed  their  souls  during  that  sad  epoch.  Youth,  enthusiasm, 
hope,  which  had  filled  all  hearts  before  and  after  1830,  seemed  to 
have  gone  out  for  ever.  .  .  .  For  many,  and  I  was  among  them, 
the  books  of  Michelet  were  then  a  comfort  and  a  cordial.  .  .  . 
With  him  one  gained  faith  in  the  future  of  the  country,  in  spite  of 
the  sadness  of  the  times.  One  could  not  escape  the  contagion 
of  his  enthusiasm,  of  his  hopes,  of  his  ever  youthful  heart."  * 
If  ever  France  dares  once  more  to  believe  in  her  own  destiny, 
Michelet's  books,  which  now  irritate  or  sadden  her  like  a  sarcasm 
or  a  dirge,  will  be  again  a  source  of  inspiration. 

3.  Victor  Hugo. 

Victor  Hugo's  supremacy  in  French  Romanticism  is  undis- 
puted. He  was  the  recognised  leader  of  the  school,  as  long  as 
Romanticism  could  be  called  a  school.  Even  men  like  Veuillot, 
Merim^e,  Eire,  who  neither  liked  his  opinions  nor  esteemed  his 
character,  were  impressed  by  the  bulk,  variety,  and  excellence 
of  his  literary  production.  A  prince  among  poets,  he  became 
also  the  idol  of  the  people  :  he  is  the  only  great  writer  whose 
name  remains  a  household  word  ;  his  funeral  was  an  apotheosis. 
Like  Napoleon,  he  is  a  part  of  the  heroic  legend  of  France. 

To  his  literary  supremacy  and  his  civic  prominence,  Hugo 
would  fain  have  added  the  crowning  glory  of  spiritual  leadership. 
In  the  latter  part  of  his  career  he  wrote  extensively  on  religious 
subjects.!  The  true  prophets  and  priests,  according  to  him, 
were  the  men  of  genius,  the  "  Magi,"  I  among  whom  he  felt 
assured  of  a  high  place.  The  study  of  Hugo's  religious  thought 
is  therefore  of  commanding  interest. 

Unfortunately,  even  at  present,  it  is  exceedingly  difficult.  In 
his  lifetime,  and  for  many  years  after  his  death,  partisanship  on 
either  side  ran  so  high  that  a  sane  appreciation  of  his  opinions 

*  G.  Monod,  Taine,  Renan,  Michelet,  178. 

t  Cf.   La  Fin  de  Satan,  Dieu,  Religions  et  Religion,  Le  Pape,  La  Piti4 
Supreme. 
I  Contemplations t  vi.  23. 


142      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

was  almost  hopeless.  Whilst  Veuillot  and  his  friends  would  call 
him  '^  Jocrisse  a  Pathmos,"  "garde  national  en  delire "  (a 
raving  Philistine),  the  Hugolaters  admired  '*  even  his  warts," 
and  made  at  least  a  demigod  of  him.  In  the  eighties,  his 
position  was  singular.  Still  active,  ever  youthful,  he  claimed 
his  place  in  the  van  of  progress,  whilst  his  convictions  and  his 
imagination  were  those  of  a  bygone  generation ;  he  was  at  the 
same  time  an  ancestor  and  a  contemporary ;  France  admired 
him  with  a  mixture  of  amusement  and  awe.  A  sharp  reaction 
followed  the  apotheosis  of  1885.  For  ten  or  fifteen  years  it  was 
the  fashion,  even  for  such  a  fair  and  sympathetic  critic  as  M. 
Lanson,  to  make  sport  of  his  apocalyptic  pretensions ;  the 
numerous  weaknesses  of  the  "  Magian  "  were  mercilessly  ex- 
posed. Renouvier's  book  on  Victor  Hugo:  the  Philosopher y 
was  the  sign  and  the  instrument  of  a  new  reaction  which 
restored  the  poet  to  his  place  among  the  spiritual  lights  of 
France.  Even  yet,  this  place  is  not  well  defined  ;  Hugo  played 
too  great  a  part  in  recent  history,  he  is  too  near  us  and  at  the 
same  time  too  different  from  us,  to  be  properly  appreciated. 

A  second  difficulty  is  that  Victor  Hugo's  opinions  changed 
repeatedly  in  the  course  of  his  long  career.  ''  I  have  grown," 
he  used  to  say,  as  an  explanation  for  these  transformations. 
True ;  but  his  development  was  not  strictly  rectilinear.  Old 
beliefs  would,  unexpectedly,  incongruously,  reappear  amid  a 
set  of  new  ideas.  The  enrichment  of  Victor  Hugo's  philo- 
sophical experience  was  less  in  the  nature  of  a  growth  than 
of  a  collection. 

This  may  be  partly  explained  by  the  attitude  he  assumed 
towards  his  times ;  he  aspired  to  voice  all  the  great  tendencies 
of  his  century;  his  *' crystal  soul  was  placed  by  God  in  the 
centre  of  everything  as  a  sonorous  echo."  He  was,  in  the 
most  exalted  sense,  the  Poet-Laureate  of  France — a  very 
legitimate  and  noble  conception  of  his  role.  Unfortunately, 
this  glorious  part  is  a  dangerous  one.  It  leads  to  a  certain 
subserviency  to  public  opinion — so  plainly  visible  in  Tennyson 
— to  the  easy  adoption  of  popular  catchwords,  and,  all  too 
often,  to  rank  flattery  of  the  powers  that  be — i.e.,  in  nineteenth- 
century  France,  of  the  populace.     Now  we  must  be  careful  not 


ROMANTIC   HUMANITARIANISM  143 

to  over-emphasise  this  element  in  Victor  Hugo.  He  loved  popu- 
larity, no  doubt ;  he  cultivated  it,  with  a  sense  of  effective 
advertising  that  would  have  done  credit  to  Barnum  himself; 
he  was  not  averse  to  a  kind  of  theatrical  eloquence  and  pose. 
English  readers  cannot  help  thinking  that  in  his  admiration 
for  the  Revolution,  in  his  love  for  France  and  Paris,  in  his 
advocacy  of  democratic  and  social  reforms,  in  his  hostility  to 
the  Catholic  Church,  he  was  partly  moved  by  the  desire  of 
flattering  popular  prejudices.  But  he  shared  these  prejudices, 
if  such  they  be,  in  all  sincerity  and  to  the  fullest  extent.  In 
spite  of  his  nobiliary  pretensions,  he  was  a  man  of  the  people, 
in  natural  sympathy  with  the  aspirations,  aversions,  and  en- 
thusiasms of  the  people.  Those  who  call  him  a  time-server 
should  remember  that  when  he  abandoned  his  party — the 
Moderates — in  the  Legislative  Assembly  (1849),  that  party 
was  strongly  entrenched  in  power  ;  that  in  his  opposition  to 
the  Empire  he  was  with  Quinet,  the  uncompromising  champion 
of  the  rights  of  conscience  against  material  success  ;  that  in 
1871  he  deliberately  jeopardised  his  immense  popularity  by 
pleading  the  cause  of  the  vanquished  Communards,  whom  he  had 
blamed  before  they  were  conquered.  Vanity  and  self-seeking 
exist  in  Victor  Hugo,  but  they  do  not  explain  all  his  career. 
We  have  to  admit  that  as  a  thinker  he  was  frequently  neither 
spontaneous  nor  absolutely  disinterested.  With  him,  more  than 
with  any  other  writer,  it  is  necessary  to  distinguish  the  three 
currents  alluded  to  by  Matthew  Arnold  : — 

"Below  the  surface  stream,  shallow  and  light, 
Of  what  we  say  we  feel ;  below  the  stream 
As  light,  of  what  we  think  we  feci,  there  flows 
With  noiseless  current,  strong,  obscure,  and  deep. 
The  central  stream  of  what  we  feel  indeed." 

What  Victor  Hugo  said  and  thought  he  felt,  during  the  period 
we  are  studying,  could  be  defined  as  orthodox  Romantic  Humani- 
tarianism,  with  a  touch  of  new-fangled  science-worship.  Victor 
Hugo  had  come  to  a  full  and  open  profession  of  these  ideas  later 
than  most  of  the  other  great  Romanticists.  During  the  last 
three  years  of  Louis-Philippe's   reign,  whilst  Lamennais   and 


144      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

Lamartine,  Michelet  and  Quinet  were  in  active  opposition  to 
the  Government,  and  had  become  the  moral  leaders  of  demo- 
cracy, Victor  Hugo  was  sitting  in  the  Chamber  of  Peers  ;  whilst 
Lamartine  and  his  friends  conquered  power  in  February,  1848, 
and  lost  it  in  June,  Victor  Hugo  remained  in  the  background ; 
when  he  was,  at  complementary  elections,  sent  to  the  Con- 
stituent Assembly,  it  was  as  a  Moderate.  His  paper,  UEvene- 
ment,  supported  the  presidential  candidacy  of  Louis-Napoleon, 
the  nominee  of  all  the  Conservatives,  against  Cavaignac,  Ledru- 
Rollin,  Raspail,  and  Lamartine.  In  the  Legislative  Assembly 
he  voted  with  the  Eight  until  the  latter  part  of  1849,  when  he 
became  at  last  a  Republican.  It  is  true  that,  from  this  moment 
on,  his  evolution  was  extremely  rapid  ;  in  a  few  months  he 
passed  from  Moderate  Liberalism  to  Radicalism,  Anti-clericalism, 
and  even  a  vague  form  of  Socialism.  But  the  suddenness  of  his 
conversion  was  not  due  to  caprice,  spite,  or  ambition.  More  or 
less  consciously,  all  the  elements  of  his  new  faith  had  existed 
in  him  for  perhaps  twenty  years.  He  had  supported  the  July 
Monarchy,  but  as  a  power  of  popular  origin,  and  he  considered 
himself  a  child  of  the  Revolution  and  the  Empire.  He  had  not 
openly  broken  with  the  Church ;  but  his  conception  of  Christ- 
ianity had  long  been  that  of  Lamennais.*  He  had  not  made 
profession  of  Socialism,  but  his  Humanitarianism  had  assumed 
other  forms — pity  for  all  victims,  for  the  poor,  for  the  fallen 
woman,  for  the  prisoner ;  earnest  and  successful  appeals  in 
favour  of  men  sentenced  to  death,  whether  they  be  common 
murderers  or  Revolutionists  (Barbes).  He,  too,  believed  in  the 
mission  of  France,  and  in  his  eyes  the  chief  agent,  the  very 
incarnation  of  this  mission,  was  Napoleon,  "Napoleon,  the  god 
whose  priest  thou  shalt  be."  In  short,  what  Victor  Hugo  did 
in  1849  was  merely  to  put  his  political  and  religious  allegiance, 
as  well  as  his  vocabulary,  in  harmony  with  his  long-established 
tendencies. 

His  resistance  to  the  Coup  d'Etat,  which  remains  one  of  the 
most  creditable  pages  in  his  history,  his  irreconcilable  opposition 

*  Cf.  his  speech  in  praise  of  Pius  IX.,  the  then  democratic  Pontiff,  House 
of  Peers,  January,  1848  :  it  contains  the  germ  of  the  long  anti-clerical  satire 
published  in  1878,  Le  Pape. 


ROMANTIC  HUMANITAEIANISM  145 

to  the  Empire,  the  publication  of  Les  Chdtiments,  gave  him 
within  the  democratic  ranks  a  supremacy  that  no  one  could 
challenge.  None  of  the  politicians,  Ledru-Rollin,  Garnier- 
Pages,  Raspail,  not  even  Louis  Blanc,  was  a  great  man  ;  besides, 
they  were  all  disqualified  by  their  failure  in  1848  and  further 
weakened  by  their  dissensions.  Lamartine  was  old,  distrusted, 
disheartened,  driven  to  hack-work  by  the  pressure  of  poverty. 
Quinet,  whose  principles  and  attitude  were  similar  to  Hugo's, 
was  less  prominent  in  the  political  field  and  vastly  inferior  in 
literary  genius ;  he  possessed  neither  Hugo's  absolute  self- 
confidence  nor  his  Napoleonic  gift  of  self-advertisement.  In 
his  island  home*  Hugo  felt  himself  to  be  the  High  Priest  of 
Romantic  Humanitarianism. 

In  this  quality,  during  the  eighteen  years  of  his  exile,  he 
expressed  magnificently  and  dogmatically,  f  in  prose  and  in 
verse,  the  orthodox  beliefs  of  his  sect.  Liberty,  equality, 
fraternity,  reason,  progress,  science,  the  people,  the  Revolution ; 
the  primacy  of  France,  a  missionary  nation,  the  elder  sister  of 
all,  the  apostle  of  the  Rights  of  Man ;  the  sacred  character  of 
Paris,  the  capital  and  the  beacon-light  of  the  world,  Sparta, 
Athens,  Rome,  and  Jerusalem  combined ;  the  future  brother- 
*  hood  of  all  peoples  in  the  Universal  Republic  after  all  powers  of 
darkness,  priests,  kings,  and  emperors  have  finally  been  exor- 
cised ;  the  eternal  reign  of  peace,  reason,  and  love — such  was 
his  Credo,  such  were  his  constant  themes,  t  These  were  noble 
ideals,  no  doubt,  even  though  they  lacked  precision  and  con- 
sistency and   took   for   granted   a  highly  questionable  view  of 

*  Jersey,  later  Guernsey. 

t  Victor  Hugo  considered  himself  so  completely  as  a  recognised  spiritual 
power,  the  Pope  of  Free-Thought,  that  he  addressed  repeated  communications 
to  States  and  nations  (the  United  States,  Italy,  Spain),  very  much  in  the 
nature  of  proclamations  or  encyclical  letters. 

I  On  all  these  points  Hugo's  vehemence  was  his  only  originality,  and  even 
in  this  he  had  been  anticipated  by  Lamennais;  the  Words  of  a  Believer 
are  written  in  the  same  tone  as  Les  Clidtiments  and  parts  of  the  Legend. 
Hugo  insisted  more  than  any  one  else  on  "  the  sacerdoce  of  Paris  " — cf.  Paris, 
Preface  to  Paris  Guide,  1S67,  published  separately  with  a  few  other  pieces  on 
the  same  subject,  Hetzel  edition ;  but  there  are  mauy  evidences  of  the  same 
feeling  in  G.  Sand  and  Michelct  about  1848  and  as  far  back  as  1831  in 
Vigny's  "elevation,"  Paris. 

10 


146      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

modern  history.  They  were  nobly  expressed,  too,  in  spite  of 
the  riotous  use  of  endless  enumerations  and  violent  antitheses. 
Some  of  Victor  Hugo's  best  known  poems  *  belong  to  this  order. 
Yet,  fine  as  these  poems  and  speeches  may  be  and  much  as 
they  may  have  contributed  to  Hugo's  fame  with  his  contem- 
poraries, they  count  for  little  in  the  spiritual  history  of  France, 
of  Romanticism,  and  even  of  the  poet  himself;  for,  although  not 
insincere,  they  are  not  original.  Hugo  was  playing  in  earnest 
his  part  as  a  ''  sonorous  echo  "  ;  he  was  the  orator  rather  than 
the  prophet  of  democracy — an  orator  audibly  prompted  from 
below ;  unconsciously  he  was  a  general  of  the  same  kind  as 
Ledru-Rollin,  who  said  apologetically,  "I  must  follow  my 
troops,  since  I  am  their  leader." 

Victor  Hugo  found  it  difficult  at  times  to  follow  them  where 
they  wanted  to  be  led.  The  hardening,  lowering,  materialising 
influences  which  were  at  work  throughout  the  world  did  not 
spare  the  Democrats  and  free-thinkers.  The  disaster  of  1848 
still  rankled  in  their  minds  ;  the  apparent  success  of  brutal  force 
was  a  demoralising  example ;  the  aggressiveness,  the  intolerance 
of  the  Church  party  led  to  angry  retorts  and  excessive  counter- 
affirmations.  The  new  generation  of  Democrats  were  apt  to 
distrust  the  unpractical  idealism  of  their  elders,  whom  they 
called  irreverently  ^' les  vieilles  barhes,^'  and,  instead  of  neo- 
Christianity,  they  adopted  pseudo- scientific  materialism  as  their 
creed.  Hugo  went  very  far  in  his  abuse  of  Catholicism  and  the 
clergy,  very  far  in  his  praises  of  the  new  idol  Science,  of  which 
he  never  formed  a  very  clear  idea.  But,  be  it  said  to  his  great 
credit,  there  were  limits  beyond  which  he  would  not  go.  In 
spite  of  all  his  paeans  in  favour  of  the  new  spirit,  he  steadily 
refused  to  accept  any  form  of  materialism.  Liberty,  respon- 
sibility, immortality,  the  existence  of  God,  remained  essential 
parts  of  his  philosophy.  In  the  age  of  Comte,  Littre,  and  Taine 
he  remained  faithful  to  the  Vicaire  Savoyard  and  M.  Cousin. 
He  fought  shy  of  Darwinism,  an  act  of  intellectual  timidity 
which  bespoke  great  moral  courage.  On  this  point,  and  perhaps 
on  this  point  alone,  he  deliberately  courted  the  accusation  of 
being  old-fashioned. 

*  Stella,  Lux,  Temps  futurs,  visions  sublime  I 


ROMANTIC   HUMANITARIANISM  147 

We  must  insist  on  his  attitude  towards  science,  which  was 
that  of  all  the  Eomanticists.  He  wrote  so  many  hymns  to 
*'the  great  deliverer,"  to  schools  which  were  to  take  the  place 
of  churches  and  make  prisons  useless,  to  investigators  who 
were  the  true  heroes  and  the  true  priests,  that  popular  opinion, 
taking  him  at  his  word,  counted  him,  with  Taine,  Renan, 
Littre,  Berthelot,  among  the  prophets  of  science.  In  this 
again  he  was  naught  but  an  echo.  Besides,  science  was 
supposed  to  be  the  political  ally  of  democracy,  since  the  Church 
had  made  the  irretrievable  mistake  of  treating  it  with  scorn  or 
diffidence.  When  the  Democrats  were  abandoned  by  Demos  in 
1848  and  in  1851,  they  came  to  the  natural  conclusion  that 
Demos  needed  to  be  enlightened ;  ignorance  alone  had  kept  him 
in  the  bonds  of  the  past.  For  all  these  reasons  Hugo  added 
Science  to  his  Pantheon,  already  well  stocked  with  heterogeneous 
idols.  How  much  he  understood  of  the  scientific  spirit  may 
be  gauged  by  a  typical  piece,  France  et  dine  ("France  and 
soul ")  :  **  I  thought,"  he  said  in  a  single  sentence  of  fifty-seven 
lines,  a  fine  instance  of  his  power  of  rhetorical  amplification — 
**  I  thought  that  the  French  Revolution  was  sufficient  proof  of 
the  immortality  of  the  soul, 

"And  when  a  grave  Englishman,  correct,  well-dressed,  wearing  jB.ne  linen,* 
Tells  me,  '  God  made  thee  a  man  and  I  make  thee  a  monkey, 
Now  show  thyself  worthy  of  such  a  favour,' 
This  promotion  leaves  me  musing." 

"Danton  wrestling  with  Europe"  maybe  sublime,  and  in  the 
sixties  or  the  seventies  Hugo  had  a  perfect  right  to  consider 
Darwinism  as  an  unproved  hypothesis,  but  to  adduce  the  one 
as  an  argument  against  the  other  is  sheer  Romanticism,  which 
for  most  scientists  is  euphemistic  for  ''  nonsense."  t 

*  "  Beau  linge,"  one  of  the  most  flagrant  and  unsuccessful  chevilles  (padding 
for  the  sake  of  the  rhyme ;  here  for  rhyming  with  singe)  in  Victor  Hugo. 

t  Indeed,  we  might  even  say  that  there  runs  through  Hugo's  production 
an  undercurrent  of  hostility  to  science,  which  became  more  apparent  as  he 
grew  older :  (1)  a  keen  sense  of  the  limitations  of  science,  incapable  of  inspir- 
ing a  philosophy,  and,  great  as  it  is,  inferior  to  art  (cf .  William  Shakespeare) 
and  to  virtue  {Les  Grandcs  Lois,  Ligendc  des  Si^cles,  2nd  series)  ;  (2) 
Scepticism:  endless  contradictions  of  scientists  among  themselves  (L'Ane) ; 
(3)  Mysticism :  the  imagination  of  poets,  an  act  of  charity  on  the  part  of  the 
humblest  animal,  go  deeper  into  the  secret  of  God  than  all  learning  {Le 
Crapaicd) . 


148      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

Victor  Hugo,  the  Pope  of  Free-thought  and  Democracy,  was 
neither  ridiculous  not  contemptible,  even  though  he  was  admired 
by  readers  of  Le  Siecle.  But  his  philosophy  was,  if  not  second- 
hand, at  least  ready-made.  The  true  Hugo  must  be  sought 
elsewhere. 

For  Victor  Hugo  was  also  the  *' weird  Titan,"  the  ''cloud- 
weaver  of  phantasmal  hopes  and  fears,"  to  v/hom  Tennyson  paid 
such  a  noble  tribute.  When  we  pass  into  this  other  region  of 
his  genius,  we  find  the  same  admirable  art,  and  also,  alas !  the 
same  excessive  rhetoric  :  but  the  spirit  is  entirely  difi'erent.  The 
robust  optimism  which  shone  even  in  invectives  and  burst  forth 
in  triumphant  prophecies  has  vanished,  and  with  it  the  taint  of 
Philistinism.  The  general  effect  is  powerful,  strange,  and 
gloomy. 

Powerful,  but  disconcerting.  Hugo's  philosophical  poems  * 
resemble  his  drawings — rays  of  lurid  light  shooting  across 
Cimmerian  darkness,  half-revealing  vague  and  monstrous  forms, 
grimacing,  impossible,  yet  strangely  alive.  Most  readers  prefer 
the  broad  daylight  of  popular  Humanitarianism,  commonplace 
but  safe,  or  even  the  good  old-fashioned  Catholic  religiosity  of 
his  earlier  writings.  The  general  public  found  these  weird 
creations  dijfficult,  monotonous,  oppressive.  The  philosophers 
ignored  them  as  arbitrary  and  inconsistent. 

We  are  not  concerned  here  with  their  literary  value  :  it  must 
be  granted  at  least  that  they  embody  an  almost  unique  effort  in 
French  poetry,  and  that  to  fail  in  wrestling  with  the  unutterable 
may  be  as  glorious  as  to  sing  exquisitely  Sarah  the  Bather  or 
everlastingly  to  call  Napoleon  HI.  Tiberius.  What  is  their 
spiritual  import?     Such  is  the  only  question  before  us. 

The  answer  greatly  depends  on  the  author's  own  attitude. 
Was  he  an  artist  playing  with  ideas  as  he  had  played  with 
rhymes  and  colours,  or  a  prophet  with  a  new  revelation  ? 
Neither.  He  constantly  referred  to  himself  as  the  "Dreamer," 
and  the  word  defines  him  admirably.     He  aspired  to  be  more 

*  Contemplations,  Vlth  Book :  On  the  verge  of  the  infinite  ;  Legend  of  tJie 
Centuries :  Vision,  The  Titan,  The  Epic  of  the  Worm,  The  Satyr,  The 
Trumpet  of  Judgment,  Abyss,  &c. ;  God ;  The  End  of  Satan ;  Religions  and 
Religion;  The  Supreme  Pity ;  The  Pope ;  The  Ass ;  &c. 


ROMANTIC   HUMANITARIANISM  149 

than  an  artist :  truth,  not  beauty  alone,  was  his  aim.  He  was 
not  a  thinker  :  he  despised  the  slow  and  uncertain  process  of 
logical  reasoning.  He  was  not,  in  any  strict  sense,  a  seer  and  a 
prophet :  his  visions,  however  vivid,  were  consciously  subjective. 
He  kept  full  control  of  his  imagination,  riotously  fecund  though 
it  was.  He  never  mistook  his  own  creations  for  direct  communi- 
cations from  powers  unseen.  The  "  Spirits,"  the  *'  Voices," 
the  *'  Shapes,"  so  often  found  in  his  later  writings,  are  mani- 
festly literary  devices.  Yet  he  is  always  '*  on  the  brink  of  the 
infinite,"  striving  to  attune  his  human  words  to  the  inefi'able. 
The  result  is  a  baffling  compound  of  art  and  sincerity,  of  con- 
sciousness and  hallucination  :  a  day-dream,  in  which  the  poet 
gives  free  career  to  his  fancy,  but  never  forgets  he  is  dreaming : 
subconscious  actor,  half-wakeful  spectator  of  a  drama  played  in 
his  own  soul. 

This  attitude  is  purely  romantic :  it  is  the  triumph  of 
individual  sentiment  and  fancy  over  authority,  tradition,  and 
reason.  But  it  is  Romanticism  at  his  highest  and  best :  for  it 
is  individualism  applied  where  it  is  most  legitimate — the  contem- 
^plation  of  the  great  Beyond  ;  and  it  is  free  from  the  damning 
delusion  of  Romanticism — the  confusion  between  the  true  and 
the  aesthetically  pleasing.  From  the  intellectual  and  the  moral 
points  of  view,  such  neglected  books  as  The  End  of  Satan  and 
God  are  vastly  superior  to  Chateaubriand's  Spirit  of 
Christianity . 

The  result  of  such  a  method  cannot  be  a  consistent  and  clear- 
cut  system.  Hugo  ofi'ered  on  almost  every  point  a  choice  of 
solutions,  which  he  adopted  successively,  according  to  his 
varying  moods.  Nay,  he  would  ofler  them  at  the  same  time, 
and  insist  on  their  contradiction,  taking  pleasure  and  pride  in 
their  incompatibility.  Antithesis  was  from  the  first  his 
favourite  figure  of  rhetoric;  contrast  was  his  ''formula"  in 
drama  and  romance ;  contradiction  the  very  essence  of  his 
thought.  After  1850,  what  had  seemed  merely  an  efi'ective  but 
overdone  literary  trick  became,  if  not  strictly  a  system,  at  least 
a  constant  habit  of  mind.  Perhaps  it  would  not  be  impossible 
to  trace  in  this  development  the  influence  of  Hegelianism.  Not 
directly,  of  course:  Victor  Hugo  was  incapable  of  the  patient 


150      FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

effort  which  such  a  study  requires.  But  before  1848  "^  Proudhon 
had  used  a  similar  method  and  staggered  the  workl  with  his 
paradoxical  and  antithetic  formulae :  God  is  Evil ;  Property  is 
Theft — out-Huofoing  Hugo  and  leaving  his  most  violent  effects  of 
contrast  far  behind.  The  general  spread  of  Hegelian  thought  t 
weakened  the  old  aversion  of  the  French  mind  for  logical  contra- 
dictions :  for  Voltaire's  contemporaries,  contradiction  meant 
absurdity ;  for  Kenan's,  it  could  mean  profundity.  Thus  the 
resistance  which  checked  Hugo's  natural  tendencies  was  partly 
removed.  After  1851,  the  solitude  of  exile  allowed  him  to 
develop  still  more  freely.  So,  in  his  later  v/orks,  he  revelled 
abundantly  in  ''thesis  and  antithesis." 

Victor  Hugo  was  a  Manichean.  He  believed  in  a  dual 
principle — God  and  Satan,  spirit  and  matter,  darkness  and 
light.  1  The  power  of  evil  became  more  and  more  real  to  him  : 
the  tone  of  his  poetry  grew  more  and  more  sombre.  Probably 
the  origin  of  this  pessimism  was  in  his  own  heart,  so  strangely 
compounded  of  strength  and  weakness  :  at  the  time  of  his  full 
maturity,  when  all  was  his,  wealth,  glory,  influence,  his  lower 
nature  was  asserting  itself  in  dramatic  contrast  with  the  exalted 
purity  of  his  young  dreams.  §  The  death  of  his  daughter 
Leopoldine  in  1843  further  darkened  his  train  of  thought. 
Whatever  his  failings  may  have  been  in  other  respects,  he  was  a 
loving  father,  and  the  wound  he  received  then  could  never  be 
healed.  Christian  resignation  inspired  his  masterpiece,  A 
Villequier,  but  he  could  not  help  being  haunted  by  the  great 
problem  which  this  death  had  set  before  him  :  "To  whom  do 
we  belong  then  ?  Who  owns  us  ?  Who  leads  us  ?  .  .  .In 
ancient  days,  in  the  depths  of  heaven,  to  the  eyes  of  the  sombre 
Magian — Two  formidable  players  appeared  in  the  gloom — Which 

*  Contradictions  Economiques,  1846. 

t  Evidence  of  this  spread  :  Scherer's  famous  article  in  the  Revue  des  Deux 
Mondes  ;  Gratry's  and  Hello's  constant  struggle  against  "  modern  sophists  " — 
the  Hegelians. 

I  His  last  line,  on  his  death-bed :  "  C'est  ici  le  combat  du  jour  et  de 
la  nuit." 

§  The  facts  about  his  "lower  nature"  are  gleefully  set  forth  in  Bir6: 
Victor  Hugo  apris  1830.  Moral  Manicheism  :  cf.  Contemplations,  II.  vi.,  11, 
12,  15,  1854-55. 


ROMANTIC  HUMANITARIANISM  151 

should  we  fear,  and  to  which  should  we  pray?  Manes,  shudder- 
ing, and  the  pale  Zoroaster — Saw  two  immense  hands  move  the 
stars — On  the  dark  chess-board — Horrible  thought !  Do  evil 
and  good,  from  this  vault — Hang  over  our  brows  ?  God,  deliver 
me  from  doubt ! — Sphinx,  tell  me  the  secret !  "  * 

Finally,  the  success  of  the  Coup  d'Etat  intensified  his 
pessimism.  The  active  part  he  had  taken  in  the  resistance 
made  him  feel  the  blow  more  keenly  than  Lamartine,  George 
Sand,  or  Michelet.  Political  defeat  was  not  the  worst :  the 
bitterness  was  to  see  a  '*  crime  "  ratified  by  the  sovereign 
people,  to  whose  cause  Victor  Hugo  had  devoted  himself;  to 
witness,  for  many  years,  the  prosperity  of  this  hateful  regime  ; 
to  feel  that  everywhere  in  Europe  reaction  was  triumphant. 
Yet  the  Second  of  December  alone  would  not  explain  Hugo's 
sombre  frame  of  mind.  For  if  it  saddened  him,  it  also  gratified 
his  pride  by  giving  him  a  role  worthy  of  himself,  by  redeeming 
him  in  his  own  eyes  and  consecrating  his  glory  before  the 
world,  t 

To  the  alternation,  or  the  conflict,  or  the  mixture  of  pessimism 
and  optimism,  both  apparently  systematic  and  extreme,  was 
added  another  contradiction  :  that  of  fatalism  and  liberty.  It 
would  indeed  be  possible  to  distinguish  in  Victor  Hugo  at  least 
four  distinct  and  parallel  conceptions  of  human  destiny  in  this 
regard.  We  have  he  fatalistic  optimism  of  his  political 
speeches:  "Progress  is  naught  but  a  phenomenon  of  gravity, 
who  shall  hinder  it  ?  0  despots  !  I  dare  you  to  do  it :  stop  the 
falling  stone  .  .  .  stop  eighty-nine,  stop  the  v/orld  hurled  by 
God  himself  into  the  Light !  "  t  By  its  side  we  have  the 
fatalistic  jjessimism  of  his  novels,  and  the  tragic  view  of  nature 
in  many  of  his  later  poems.  All  his  heroes  die  in  despair. 
"  A  triple  ananke  (fate),"  he  said,  **  weighs  upon  all  creation. 
Notre  Dame  de  Paris  set  forth  the  ananke  of  dogma ;  Lcs 
Mis^rables,  the  ananke  of  laws  ;  the  Toilers  oj  the  Sea,  the 
ananke  of  Nature."     The   indijBference,  the  cruelty  of  nature, 

*   Villequier,  September  4,  1845,  Contemplations,  IV.  S. 
t  Cf.  Contemplations,  V.  3.     Eerit  en  1855.  "  Je  suis  content !  "     VI.  24— 
En  frappant  u  uue  porte  :  "  Je  n'ai  rien  a  la  conscience.     Ouvre,  tombeau  !  " 
\  Actes  et  Paroles  :  Garibaldi,  June  18,  18C0. 


152      FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

the  horror  of  the  universal  struggle  for  existence,*  took  a  strong 
hold  of  his  imagination  : — 

"All  suffer!    Large  and  small,  the  bold  and  the  prudent, 
All  meet  a  hunter,  a  claw,  a  tooth !  .   .  . 

Everywhere  the  woods  are  afraid ;  everywhere  the  beasts  tremble 
With  a  shudder  of  anger  and  terror  ;  it  seems 
To  whoever  sees  creation  from  one  side  only 
That  unspeakable  hatred  fills  the  firmament.  .  .  ,"  f 

History  is  even  darker  than  nature.  The  Legend  of  the 
Centuries  is  a  sombre  tale  of  catastrophes,  treasons,  and  crimes. 
The  kings  are  monstrous  tyrants  ;  the  people  are  ignorant  and 
cowardly;  the  just  are  ever  sacrificed.!  Still  gloomier  is  The 
End  of  Satan  :  the  sword,  the  cross,  the  prison,  are  the  symbols 
of  all  human  history.  The  natural  conclusion  of  pessimistic 
fatalism  is  moral  irresponsibility.  Ignorance  and  Night  alone 
are  guilty.  The  most  unreserved  indulgence  seems  to  be 
"  supreme  pity,"  but  it  is  only  justice. § 

*  This  before  Darwinism,  often  made  responsible  for  this  pessimistic 
conception  of  the  universal  struggle  for  life,  could  have  any  influence  upon 
him.     It  was  simply  a  manifestation  of  his  general  pessimism. 

t  Dieu :  L'Ange,  189 ;  cf .  also  Dolor,  Contemplations,  VI,  17 — The  Mouth 
of  Darkness,  Contemplations,  VI.  26.  Toilers  of  the  Sea,  second  part,  iv.  : 
2.  God :  the  Bat,  the  Angel. 

I   Welf,  Castellan  d'Osbor  :  le  poHe  a  Welf. 

§  Fatalistic  pessimism  and  optimism  are  hard  to  reconcile.  V.  H. 
attempted  such  a  reconciliation  in  Night  Voyage,  Cont.,  VI.  19.  This  world 
is  a  ship  on  which  all  is  horror,  ignorance,  confusion ;  "  Progress,  a  wheel 
with  a  double  gear  (?)  can  set  nothing  in  motion  without  crushing  some  one." 
But  the  ship,  not  the  crew,  knows  the  way,  "  And  one  feels  that  one  is 
carried  towards  the  light." 

Another  attempt  is  the  catastrophic  theory ;  the  past  is  dark,  the  imme- 
diate future  darker.  But  one  last  Revolution,  one  last  war,  and  the  world 
will  be  rid  of  the  enemies  of  progress — kings  and  priests.  This  is  the 
usual  mystico-revolutionary  ideal,  with  a  strong  Apocalyptic  tinge  (Arma- 
geddon, Millennium). 

A  third  is  the  belief  that  science  will  cure  all  human  ills,  by  a  sudden 
discovery  which  will  radically  transform  the  world — "the  conquest  of  the 
air,"  aviation  [Ligende  des  Slides,  Plein  Ciel).  One  fails  to  grasp  the 
opposition  between  "Leviathan" — the  Great  Eastern — as  symbol  of  all 
the  darkness  and  injustice  of  the  present,  and  the  airship,  representing  the 
freedom  and  splendour  of  the  future,  for  the  steamer  was  also  a  product  of 


\ 


ROMANTIC   HUMANITARIANISM  153 

A  third  conception  is  naturalistic  pantheism.  This,  expressed 
as  early  as  1837  in  the  famous  piece  The  Cow  {Voix  Interieures), 
was  reaffirmed  in  Les  Contemplations,  Les  ChdtimentSy*  and 
inspired  in  the  Legende  des  Siecles  the  wonderful  poem  The 
Satyi ,  as  well  as  the  Hymn  to  the  Earth  in  the  third  series. 
It  points  neither  to  hope  nor  despair,  neither  to  love  nor  hatred, 
hut  to  a  serene  acceptation  of  the  laws  of  universal  life.  It  is 
non-moral  and  fatalistic. 

With  a  fourth  conception,  Hugo  absolutely  breaks  away  from 
fatalism,  whether  optimistic,  pessimistic,  or  indifferent.  In  the 
Legend,  Conscience  (Cain),  The  Parricide  (Knut),  and  in  all  his 
works,  innumerable  passages,  either  symbols  or  direct  expression 
of  his  belief,  posit  liberty  and  duty  as  the  laws  of  human  life, 
with  their  coroWoxie^,  responsibility  and  immortality:  "I  want 
to  be  free  here  below,  responsible  elsewhere — I  am  more  than 
a  stalk  of  grass  or  a  grain  of  sand — I  feel  I  am,  for  all  eternity, 
thinking,  winged,  living."  f 

But  what  form  will  responsibility  assume?  Here  Victor 
Hugo  offers  us  a  bewildering  choice  of  solutions.  They  express 
all  possible  degrees  of  conviction,  from  deeply-rooted  belief, 
through  hypothesis,  myth,  passing  flight  of  fancy,  to  mere 
verbal  figures.  Sometimes  he  adopted  the  Christian  tradition 
of  a  Judgment  Day  at  the  end  of  time  (The  Trumpet  of 
Judgment,  Legende  des  Siecles) .     A  favourite  conception  with  him 

human  science.  We  have  to  accept  two  assumptions,  one  erroneous,  the 
other  mythical :  (1)  Aerial  navigation  is  a  victory  over  gravity. 

*•  Gravity,  fastened  to  the  foot  of  mankind, 
Was  broken  :  a  chain  which  was  all  the  chains." 

[Plein    Ciel).     (2)  Sin,    suffering,   darkness    and    gravity  are    synonymous. 

'*  God  created  only  the  imponderable  being. 
Now,  the  first  sin  was  the  first  weight. 
Weight  assumed  a  form;  it  fell,  dragging  the  angel  down." 

*'  Tout  alia  s'aggravant,"  almost  a  metaphysical  pun.  This  conception  offers  a 
curious  case  of  an  image,  reduced  for  most  of  us  to  a  verbal  and  meaningless 
figure,  transformed  into  a  doctrine,  or  rather  into  a  myth,  by  the  powerful 
and  primitive  imagination  of  a  poet.  Note  that  while  evil  is  gravity,  progress 
is  also  spoken  of  as  a  '  phenomenon  of  gravity." 

•  VII.  12  :  La  Fm-ce  des  Choses. 

t  Les  Qrandes  Lois,  third  Ligende  des  SUcles. 


154      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

was  Conscience  as  the  avenger.  Admirably  BymboliBed  in  the 
eye  which  followed  Cain  even  into  his  tomh  {La  Conscience),  or 
the  slow  rain  of  blood  on  Knut's  shroud  {Le  Parricide),  it 
pervades  Les  Chdtiments.  A  stranger  doctrine  which  he 
often  expressed  in  his  conversations,*  before  he  gave  it 
public  utterance  in  Religions  and  Religion^  is  that  of 
optional  immortality.  Annihilation  is  the  worst  punishment ; 
personal  feeling  is  to  be  trusted,  whether  it  affirms  or  negates 
eternal  life  :  '*  Dante  wrote  two  lines,  then  went  out,  and  the 
two  lines  spoke  to  each  other  :  '  I  am  immortal,'  and  *  I  am 
doomed  to  perish.'  Some  one  entered  :  it  was  Dante  himself. 
He  kept  the  first  line  and  struck  out  the  second.  .  .  .  One 
died,  the  other  lived  :  both  were  right." t  The  astral  theory, 
later  propounded  by  Jean  Reynaud  in  Earth  and  Heaven, 
had  already  tempted  him.  We  shall  wander  from  star  to 
star,  **  reading  the  infinite  Work  and  the  eternal  poem — line 
by  line,  sun  by  sun."  The  guilty  will  be  imprisoned  in 
Saturn,  "hideous  and  formidable  globe, "+  or  in  horrible 
phantom  worlds,  careering  through  the  ''invisible  and  the 
impalpable."  §  Lastly,  the  strangest  of  all  these  hypotheses, 
the  most  personal,  and  the  one  on  which  he  insisted  most 
complacently,  was  that  of  universal  metempsychosis,  of  trans- 
migration, not  merely  from  man  to  man  or  from  man  to  beast, 
but  lower  still,  from  beast  to  tree,  and  from  tree  to  stone, 
"which  is  Hell."  Man  is  one  link  in  the  chain  which  reaches 
from  the  angels  down  to  the  lower  worlds,  to  the  abyss  where 
one  sees  *'  a  hideous  dark  sun  from  which  Night  radiates." 
The  whole  universe  is  alive,  full  of  souls.  Sin  drags  us  down, 
even  to  the  level  of  brute  matter,  "  a  stone  is  a  cave  in  which 
a  criminal  lies  dreaming."]!  "  Nimrod  groans,  confined  in  the 
abrupt  mountain  .  .  .  the  pincers  which  glow  in  the  hideous 
brazier — Are  made  with  the  Duke  of  Alva  and  Philip  the 
Second.  .   .   ."H      This  conception  is  so  foreign  to  our  modern 

*  E.g.,  to  Stapfer  in  18C8. 
t  Religions  et  lieligion,  iv, 

I  Satunie,  Cont.,  III.  3,  1839. 

§  Inferni,  L€g.  XXXII.,  third  series. 

II  Qod  :  Tlie  Aiigel,  208. 

M   Tiie  Mouth  of  DarkTvess,  Cont.,  VI.  201. 


ROMANTIC   HUMANITARIANISM  155 

habits  of  thought  that  it  is  difficult  to  consider  it  as  anything 
but  a  brilliant  literary  theme.  Yet  it  probably  meant  much 
more  than  that  to  Victor  Hugo.  The  insistence  with  which  he 
developed  it  in  The  Mouth  of  Darktiess,  the  immense  place  he 
gave  it  in  the  parts  of  God  where  he  manifestly  expressed  his 
favourite  ideas,  lead  us  to  think  that  he  more  than  half  believed 
in  this  strange  doctrine.  We  should  bear  in  mind  that  with 
his  rank  imagination,  his  absolute  self-confidence,  his  lack  of 
external  or  internal  checks  in  the  way  of  common  sense, 
humour,  tradition,  or  the  scientific  spirit,  Victor  Hugo  was 
more  akin  to  the  primitive  Seer  than  to  a  modern  thinker. 

•  Manicheism,  while  it  recognises  the  separate  existence  of  two 
principles,  does  not  necessarily  maintain  that  these  two  prin- 
ciples are  co-eternal.  Hugo's  sombre  poems  end  invariably  in 
a  song  of  hope.  Evil  will  finally  be  conquered,  or  rather 
redeemed,  transfigured,  absorbed.  Belial  and  Jesus  will  be 
brothers.  Matter,  darkness,  negation,  hatred,  will  vanish  ; 
light  and  love  alone  will  rule.*  How  will  this  be  achieved  ? 
Tlirough  suffering  made  meritorious,  transmuted  into  sacrifice 
by  the  operation  of  liberty.  Such  is  the  meaning  of  the  central 
myth  in  the  End  of  Satan.  The  last  feather  from  Lucifer's 
wing,  as  he  fell  from  heaven,  was  saved  and  turned  into  an  angel. 
Liberty.  Liberty  is  the  daughter  of  God  and  Satan,  of 
rebellion  and  love.  Through  her  Satan  himself  will  be  saved  : 
no  longer  able  to  deny,  to  hate,  he  still  despairs :  he  cannot  be 
forgiven,  for  He  whose  name  is  Love  hates  him!  "  No,  the 
archangel  rises  again,  the  demon  ends ;  Satan  is  dead  :  be  born 
anew,  0  celestial  Lucifer!  " 

The  ultimate  question  remains:  "What  was  Hugo's  con- 
ception of  God?"  He  did  not  spare  his  criticism  to  all 
anthropomorphic  representations  of  the  Absolute.  On  this 
point,  his  anti-clericalism  and  his  philosophy  were  in  accord,  t 
One  thing  is  certain  :  God  was  a  living  reality  to  him,  and  in 
spite  of  a  number  of  pantheistic  passages  an  unshakable  belief 
in  the  personality  of  God  is  manifest  in  all  his  writings.     Finally, 

•  La  Bouche  d'Ombre,  end,  1855 ;  Plein  Ciel,  Dieu  :  L'Ange. 

t  Cf.  Ligende,  les  raisons  du  Momontoynho ;  Ann4e  Terrible:  AVEvique 
qui  jn'appelle  ath<>e  ;  Religions  et  Religion. 


156      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

he  devoted  to  God — or  rather  to  the  idea  of  God — a  long  poem, 
which,  written  in  1855,  was  not  published  until  1886.* 

After  listening  to  "  Voices,"  which  attempt  to  discourage  him 
from  his  quest,  the  Dreamer,  in  his  mystic  ascent,  meets  a  suc- 
cession of  symbolical  Beings,  each  immeasurably  above  the  other, 
each  the  bearer  of  a  partial  revelation.  First,  the  Bat,  who  re- 
presents Atheism,  and  whose  answer  is  :  Nihil.  Then  the  Owl, 
who  stands  for  Scepticism,  and  to  the  great  question  replies  : 
Quid  ?  and  the  Raven,  the  symbol  of  Manicheism,  whose  solu- 
tion is  :  Duplex.  Next  comes  the  Vulture  of  Paganism,  the 
one  who  was  eating  Prometheus's  liver  until  Orpheus  bade  him 
cease  and  follow  him.  The  word  is  :  Multiplex ;  there  are  gods, 
*'  but  the  gods  are  not  the  causes."  In  spite  of  apparent  failure, 
Prometheus's  task  is  done.  *'  The  flame  is  stolen  :  it  is  on 
earth — Where  ?  "  asks  the  poet — but  the  Vulture  disappears. 
Higher  still  soars  the  Eagle :  his  revelation  is  :  Unus — he 
stands  for  Mosaism.  There  is  one  God,  avenging,  terrible, 
I'ealous,  visiting  the  sins  of  mortal  man  on  twenty  generations.! 
The  spirit  of  Christianity  is  a  Griffin :  God  is  a  trinity ;  His 
principle  is  love,  forgiveness,  clemency.  "No,  says  the  Angel 
with  one  wing  white  and  the  other  black,  who  voices  Rationalism  : 
God  is  Truth.  Neither  avenging  nor  clement,  He  is  just ; 
to  avenge  an  insult  is  to  notice  it  and  deserve  it.  To  be  clement 
is  to  be  unjust  for  all  those  who  are  not  forgiven."  There  is 
no  eternal  Hell,  but  eternal  progress  through  suffering,  an 
ascent  in  the  whole  scale  of  creation,  from  infra-matter  to  super- 
spirit,  t  Highest  of  all  is  the  living  Light,  who  reveals  "  that 
which  is  still  unnamed" — "Vengeance,  pardon,  justice  are 
human  words.  He  is.  What  is  He  ?  Ask  no  more !  Darkness 
is  the  question,  the  world  is  the  answer.     He  is.     He  cannot  be 

*  This  long  delay  in  publishing  a  publicly  announced,  fully  completed 
poem,  the  work  of  the  author's  maturity  (1855  is  the  date  of  many  admirable 
pieces  in  Les  Contemplations),  cannot  be  satisfactorily  explained. 

f  The  exposition  of  Mosaism,  as  Hugo  calls  it,  is  curiously  intermingled 
with  Brahmanic  elements  :  this  world  is  a  dream  of  God,  and  will  cease  to  be 
when  God  awakens. 

I  The  revelation  of  the  Angel  is  practically  a  duplication  of  "  What  the 
Mouth  of  Darkness  said "  {Contemplations}.  Same  central  doctrine — uni- 
versal metempsychosis  ;  same  four-rhymed  couplets  with  a  lyrical  conclusion 
in  six-line  stanzas  ;  same  date. 


ROMANTIC  HUMANITARIANISM  157 

named.  Love  alone  foreshadows  Him.  For  to  be  is  to  love. 
He  is.  Nothing  exists  but  He  alone.  All  the  rest  is  a  dream. 
Light,  0  Light,  cries  the  poet,  is  this  all  ?  And  the  Light 
answers :  Silence  !  .  .  .  Blind  is  whoever  thinks  he  can  read, 
and  insane  whoso  believes  he  knows."  Then  the  poet  meets 
a  Shape,  who  says:  ''What  sleeping  man  can  know,  thou 
knowest.  Dost  thou  wish  to  reach  the  goal,  to  see  the  invisible, 
the  unnamed,  the  ideal,  the  real  ?  Yes  !  I  cried.  He  touched 
my  brow  with  his  finger.     And  I  died."     This  at  last  was  Day. 

No  abstract  can  convey  the  impression  made  by  this  weird  and 
powerful  poem,  the  feeling  of  breathless  ascent  from  the  material 
through  the  spiritual  to  the  very  gates  of  Life.  If  it  does  not 
sum  up  all  philosophy,  at  least  it  gives  us  the  essence  of  Hugo's : 
a  passionate  quest  for  the  Ultimate  Truth,  universal  curiosity, 
and,  as  supreme  answer,  awe-struck  silence. 

Is  this  to  be  deemed  a  failure  ?  If  the  making  of  consistent 
systems  be  religion,  Hugo  undoubtedly  failed.  We  have  con- 
sidered in  him  the  "  orator  "  and  the  "  poet."  The  former  was 
commonplace  ;  the  latter,  through  numberless  and  conflicting 
phantasmagorias,  ended  in  a  confession  of  impotence. 

But  when  all  the  weaknesses  of  the  man  have  been  pointed 
out,  all  the  limitations  of  the  poet,  all  the  inconsistencies  and 
absurdities  of  the  thinker  —  his  frantic  and  overwhelming 
rhetoric,  his  ignorance,  on  which  his  assumption  of  omniscience 
threw  a  glaring  light — when  all  is  said,  Hugo  remains  Hugo, 
one  of  the  five  or  six  supreme  poets  of  mankind. 

In  the  religious  field  he  was  great  in  three  difi'erent  ways. 
First  of  all,  as  the  poet  of  conscience.  He  took  a  hack- 
neyed theme,  the  story  of  Cain,  and  by  sheer  force  of  convic- 
tion and  genius  he  told  it  again  with  the  directness  and  im- 
pressiveness  of  an  ancient  prophet.  What  La  Conscience  is 
among  his  symbolical  poems.  Ultima  Verba  is  among  his 
political,  and  the  oft-quoted  line,  "  Et  s'il  n'en  reste  qu'un,  je 
serai  celui-la,"  is  more  than  a  happy  phrase,  it  is  a  lesson  and 
a  ''  Sursum  Corda."  Hugo  made  his  whole  life  under  the  Second 
Empire  a  slightly  rhetorical  but  magnificent  ode  to  conscience 
and  duty. 

Then  he  is  great  as  the  poet  of  love,  or  rather  of  pity.     In 


158      FRENCH   PEOPHETS   OF   YESTERDAY 

songs  of  selfish  passion,  great  virtuoso  as  he  is,  he  is  inferior  by 
far  to  the  sincerer  Musset.  But  his  heart  was  ever  filled  with 
ardent  sympathy  for  the  poor,  the  weak,  the  sufferer  every- 
where. Whether  in  his  immense  prose  epic,  Les  Miserahles, 
or  in  poems,  perfect  like  the  Toad,  or  excessive  like  Sultan 
Mourad,  he  preached  the  same  lesson  :  ''Be  kind !  Thou 
searchest,  0  philosopher?  0  thinker,  ponderest?  Dost  thou 
wish  to  find  truth  under  our  accursed  mists  ?  Believe,  weep, 
lose  thyself  into  the  Unfathomable  Love  !  "  {Le  Crapaud).  And 
in  this  again  he  lived  by  the  law  he  taught. 

Finally,  in  a  nation  which  had  not  yet  fully  disowned  King 
Voltaire,  in  an  age  when  philosophy  and  religion  had  alike 
become  materialistic,  against  the  full  tide  of  Positivism  and 
Ultramontanism,  he  was  a  passionate  seeker  after  God,  and 
with  all  his  contradictions  and  his  exaggerations,  he  succeeded 
in  communicating  to  his  reader  something  of  his  own  intense 
yearning,  something  of  his  shuddering  ecstasy  before  the 
unutterable. 


BOOK   III 
CHAPTER   I 

THE   NEW   SPIRIT— BACKGROUND    AND   INFLUENCES 

1.  Characteristics, 

Political  revolutions,  with  their  sudden  and  spectacular 
changes  of  personnel  and  vocabulary,  have  no  exact  counterpart 
in  the  world  of  thought  and  feeling,  in  which  modifications  are 
seldom  so  sweeping  and  so  instantaneous.  Yet  the  transforma- 
tion which  took  place  toward  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century  has  often  been  called  an  intellectual  revolution,  and 
it  deserves  that  name  better  perhaps  than  any  movement 
since  the  Renaissance. 

In  the  late  forties  and  the  early  fifties,  a  new  spirit,  after 
a  lung  process  of  development,  came  to  full  consciousness 
and  assumed  definite  forms.  To  get  away  from  abstractions 
and  fancies ;  to  turn  one's  back  on  mystics,  romanticists, 
schoolmen,  doctrinaires  and  metaphysicians  of  all  kinds  ;  to 
seek  nothing  but  sober  truth,  whether  it  be  pleasant  or  un- 
pleasant, moral  or  in  apparent  contradiction  with  accepted 
notions  of  morality  ;  to  expect  truth  only  from  the  dispassionate 
study  of  facts  :  buch  were  the  cardinal  points  of  the  new 
doctrine.  Empiricism  in  government,  industrialism  in  the 
economic  and  social  world,  realism  in  art,  the  experimental 
method  in  science,  positivism — in  its  broadest  sense — in 
philosophy :  all  were  parallel  manifestations  of  the  same 
tendency. 

In    France,    the    success    of  the   new    spirit   was   rapid    and 

159 


160     FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

complete.  By  1855  the  battle  was  virtually  over:  the  "  Theo- 
logians," whose  social  power  was  still  formidable,  were  hope- 
lessly defeated  in  the  field  of  thought,  and  have  never  recovered 
their  advantage.  Those  of  the  older  writers  who  were  still 
adaptable  were  strongly  influenced  by  the  scientific  spirit : 
Michelet,  Quinet,  George  Sand,  Victor  Hugo,  did  at  least 
lip-service  to  the  new  goddess  ;  while  de  Vigny  and  Sainte- 
Beuve  kept  fully  abreast  of  the  times.  With  all  the  leading 
men  of  the  rising  generation,  the  same  inspiration  prevailed ; 
Flaubert  and  the  Goncourts  were  its  representatives  in  the 
novel,  Dumas  and  Augier  in  the  drama,  Scherer,  and  especially 
Taine  and  Kenan,  the  princes  of  them  all,  in  criticism,  history, 
and  philosophy. 

There  had  been  no  lack  of  gTeat  scientists  in  France  before 
the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth  century ;  but  never  had  their 
special  turn  of  mind  and  their  method  ruled  the  world  to  such 
a  degree.  The  scientific  spirit  of  the  fifties  difi'ered  in  many 
ways  from  that  of  the  Renaissance  or  the  eighteenth  century. 
First  of  all,  it  lacked  the  element  of  joyousness,  almost  of 
intoxication,  which  is  generally  inseparable  from  any  great 
forward  movement,  and  which  was  so  noticeable  in  the  two 
earlier  periods.  Then  it  was  pervaded  with  the  comparatively 
recent  notions  of  relativity  and  evolution.  Finally  it  had 
developed  the  experimental  method  to  such  an  extent  as  to 
make  it  almost  the  whole  of  science. 


It  is  a  striking  fact  that,  complete  as  the  triumph  was, 
no  elation  went  with  it :  the  victors  were  modest,  subdued, 
almost  pessimistic.  For  the  movement  was  not  merely  one 
of  expansion,  of  conquest ;  it  was  a  reaction  as  well,  and  a 
reaction  against  much  that  men  hold  dear.  There  was  no 
doubt  but  Romanticism,  democratic  Christianity,  Utopian 
Socialism,  were  admirably  attractive :  they  appealed  to  our 
best  instincts,  the  virtues  of  faith,  hope,  and  charity ;  they 
roused  optimism  and  enthusiasm,  they  called  to  action,  they 
held  forth  the  mystic  lure  of  a  golden  age  near  at  hand.  They 
ended  in  apparent  failure,  and  a  great  chill  fell  over  the  world. 


THE   NEW   SPIRIT  161 

It  is  not  the  triumph  of  science,  therefore,  but  the  collapse 
of  Humanitarianism,  which  was  mainly  responsible  for  the 
sombre  colouring  of  French  thought  under  the  Second  Empire. 
It  was  not  Darwinism,  for  instance,  that  created  a  brutal  and 
pessimistic  conception  of  life  ;  it  was  this  pre-existing  concep- 
tion which  interpreted  Darwinism  in  terms  of  its  own  disen- 
chantment. The  Days  of  June,  the  Coup  d'Etat,  covered  France 
with  moral  ruins ;  these  science  could  not  repair  in  a  moment, 
as  poets  and  prophets  rear  their  dream-palaces  with  a  single 
word.  "  Whence — whither  ?  Why  is  there  such  an  abyss 
between  our  lower  instincts  and  our  aspirations  ?  What  is 
right,  what  is  wrong?  Why  should  we  choose  the  one  rather 
than  the  other?"  To  these  eternal  questions,  science  had 
no  definite  answer  to  give.  We  want,  for  the  past,  an  explana- 
tion ;  for  the  present,  a  guide  ;  for  the  future,  a  hope :  these 
science  could  not  ofier. 

Thus,  if  science  did  not  create  the  gloom  which  prevailed 
during  that  period,  it  failed  to  dispel  it.  Slowly,  patiently, 
it  continued  its  work :  serene,  disinterested,  indifferent  to 
human  judgments  and  human  sufferings,  it  seemed  to  many 
immoral,  frivolous,  or  harsh.  Yet  it  saved  many  noble  souls 
from  selfishness,  scepticism,  and  despair.  If  science  could  not 
fathom  the  ultimate,  at  least  it  could  indefinitely  extend  the 
limits  of  the  relatively  certain  ;  if  it  could  promise  no  millennium 
in  the  near  future,  it  assured  immediate  and  constant  improve- 
ments ;  if  it  could  not  formulate  an  indisputable  code  of  moral 
laws,  it  proved  that  it  could  inspire  the  lives  of  saints  and 
martyrs.  Thus  gradually  the  old  spirit  of  confidence  was 
returning,  chastened  but  strengthened,  when  the  Franco-German 
War  and  the  Commune  determined  a  new  pessimistic  reaction.* 

*  The  pessimistic  tone  of  French  literature  under  Napoleon  III.  was 
sometimes  ascribed  to  the  influence  of  Hartmann  and  especially  Schopenhauer. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  neither  of  these  men  was  widely  known  in  France  until 
after  the  war.  It  was  Challemel-Lacour's  article  in  La  Revue  des  Deux 
Mondes  {Un  Bouddhistei  Contemporain  en  Alleviagne,  March  15th,  1870) 
that  made  Schopenhauer  famous  in  France.  Challemel-Lacour  was  himself 
a  thorough  pessimist,  as  well  as  a  great  writer  :  unfortunately,  his  literary 
career  was  cut  short  by  politics  (cf.  Etudes  et  Reflexions  d'nn  Pessimiste, 
published  in  1901,  but  written  between  1861  and  1869).  Mme.  Ackermann 
had  no  difficulty  in  proving  that  her  pessimism  at  least  owed  nothing  to  the 

11 


162     FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

The  second  striking  characteristic  of  the  new  spirit  was  the 
predominance  of  two  ideas,  relativity  and  evolution.  As  long 
as  science  was  conceived  on  the  type  of  mathematics,  the 
discovery  of  static  laws  was  its  only  goal ;  their  application 
to  physics,  and  in  particular  to  astronomy,  seemed  the  highest 
achievement  of  the  human  mind  ;  man  had  thus  the  absolute 
within  his  grasp.  The  world  was  the  sum  of  these  unchangeable 
laws,  hierarchised  in  such  a  way  that,  from  generalisation  to 
generalisation,  some  future  Newton  would  come  to  the  ultimate 
synthesis,  to  the  supreme  formula  which  gives  the  key  of  the 
whole.  The  notion  of  eternal  order  prevailed  :  that  of  develop- 
ment was  neglected.  As  for  God,  His  role  was  singularly 
restricted  :  the  order  fixed  once  for  all  left  Him  no  part  in 
His  universe.  According  to  Descartes,  He  had  given  the  *'  first 
fillip"  that  started  the  machine;  according  to  Voltaire,  He 
was  a  convenient  hypothesis  ;  according  to  Laplace,  a  use- 
less  one. 

This  scientific  dogmatism,  centring  in  the  idea  of  absolute 
law,  seems  to  us  more  akin  to  metaphysics  and  deductive  logic 
than  to  true  science:  it  is  a  form  of  Rationalism.  It  did  not 
disappear  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century ;  as  late  as 
the  Second  Empire  its  influence  was  still  great,  not  only  on 
Taine,  who  was  primarily  a  logician,  but  on  the  subtle  and 
'*  wavy"  mind  of  Renan.  The  notion  of  law  remains  at  least 
an  indispensable  working  hypothesis,  and  the  most  radical 
empiricists  use  it  without  scruple  ;  but  in  the  course  of  the 
nineteenth  century  this  notion  underwent  a  great  change ; 
it  lost  much  of  its  absolute  character. 

The  first  cause  of  this  transformation  was  the  irreparable 
ruin  of  traditional  authority.  In  attacking  "abuses"  and 
"superstitions,"  the  philosophers  of  the  eighteenth  century 
started  a  critical  movement  which  went  far  beyond  their  inten- 
tion. It  undermined  not  only  Catholic  practices  and  theology, 
but  even  the  simplified  form  of  Christianity  which  they  had 
to  offer  under  the  name   of  Natural   Religion.     The   Catholic 

German  philosopher,  although,  as  she  spent  a  number  of  years  in  Berlin,  she 
had  a  bettor  chance  than  most  of  her  compatriots  of  being  influenced  by 
German  thought.  This  is  a  case  when  the  apparent  cause  is  indeed  but 
^  result, 


THE   NEW   SPIRIT  163 

reaction  in  the  nineteenth  century  was  either  sentimental 
or  social  :  intellectually — in  the  realm  of  abstract  truth — the 
lost  ground  was  never  reconquered.  Cousin  and  the  Eclecticists 
soon  reduced  their  ambition  to  revamping  Voltaire's  and 
Rousseau's  theism ;  but,  although  their  doctrine  was  taught 
in  all  State  schools  until  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
it  was  laughed  out  of  court  by  Taine  in  1857,  and  lightly 
brushed  aside  by  Renan  with  his  best  smile  of  courteous 
contempt.  Between  the  old  sjmthesis  and  the  new  there  was 
an  interregnum,  which  was  naturally  filled  by  scepticism,  ever 
ready  to  take  the  vacant  place.  It  was  not  Montaigne's  amused, 
easy-going  pyrrhonism,  but  a  deeper,  more  melancholy  form 
of  doubt.  Hugo  himself,  Sainte-Beuve,  Taine,  Renan,  Leconte 
de  Lisle,  were  repeatedly  driven  to  the  same  conclusion:  "We 
know  nothing  ;  all  is  illusion." 

The  Catholic  philosophers — Gratry,  Hello,  Dupanloup — and, 
to  a  certain  extent,  that  semi-cleric  Caro,  ascribed  the  develop- 
ment of  scepticism  to  Hegelian  influences,  and  Scherer,  in  his 
gi-eat  article  on  Hegel,  adopted  the  same  view.  Hegel  is  so 
ideally  un-French  in  his  mode  of  exposition  that  his  direct  action 
was  not  considerable.  Certainly,  what  he  himself  held  to  be 
the  central  point  of  his  doctrine — the  possibility  of  reconstruct- 
ing the  universe  by  a  mental  process,  the  identity  of  the  rational 
with  the  real — found  no  acceptance  west  of  the  Rhine  ;  it  was 
metaphysics  with  a  vengeance,  at  a  time  when  metaphysics  were 
utterly  discredited.  His  conception  of  God  inspired  Vacherot's 
works,*  a  noble  but  isolated  attempt,  and  Renan  used  it  to  great 
advantage  for  wriggling  out  of  the  dilemma,  Theism  or  Atheism  ? 
But  it  was  chiefly  Hegel's  dialectical  method,  the  resolution  of 
contradictions  into  a  higher  synthesis,  and  so  ad  infinitum, 
which  impressed  the  French  mind.  The  principle  implied  in 
this  method  is  that  nothing  is  true  or  false,  nothing  is  right  or 
wrong,  in  and  by  itself  ;  that  all  human  notions  and  judgments 
are  relative  ;  that  the  absolute — in  spite  of  certain  venturesome 
developments  of  Hegelianism — is  beyond  our  reach.  This 
view  tallied  so  well  with  the  actual  state  of  afi'airs — the  collapse 
of  all  absolutistic  doctrines  in  presence  of  destructive  criticism — 
•  La  Mitaphysique  et  la  Science,  1868. 


164      FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

that  it  found  wide  acceptance.  Some  adopted  it  with  a  sort  of 
stoic  joy,  others  with  the  unspeakable  anguish  so  eloquently 
described  by  Scherer. 

An  age  which  believes  it  already  possesses  absolute  truth,  or 
at  least  that  absolute  truth  is  accessible,  can  afford  to  neglect 
history.  The  nineteenth  century,  so  restless,  so  sceptical,  threw 
itself  with  a  sort  of  passion  into  the  study  of  the  past.  Vico, 
Herder,  had  paved  the  way.  In  France,  it  was  one  of  the 
essential  elements  of  Romanticism.  Chateaubriand's  Martyrs 
kindled  the  vocation  of  Augustin  Thierry.  Whilst  the  Classicists 
had  insisted  on  all  that  is  permanent  and  general,  it  was  differ- 
ences, contradictions,  peculiarities,  that  attracted  the  Roman- 
ticists. The  historical  spirit  and  the  notion  of  relativity  worked 
admirably  together,  for  the  study  of  the  past  shatters  dogmatism, 
whilst  relativism  alone  enables  us  to  understand  and  to  sympa- 
thise with  vanished  civilisations. 

Yet  history  remained  long  encumbered  with  traces  of  meta- 
physics. ''Philosophies"  were  devised,  to  which  facts  were 
made  to  conform.  This  was  very  striking,  before  1848,  in  the 
case  of  Quinet  and  Guizot.  Sainte-Beuve  offered  a  much  better 
example  of  disinterestedness  in  his  Port  Royal.  Renan  and  Taine 
were  loud  in  their  protestations  of  scientific  impartiality.  As  to 
the  validity  of  their  claims  there  is  much  to  be  said,  for  the  old 
notion  of  rigid  law  died  hard,  and  more  than  one  "  scientific  his- 
torian "  is  but  a  rationalist  in  disguise. 

The  prevalence  of  the  historical  spirit  in  literature  in  the 
nineteenth  century,  especially  after  1848,  is  undoubted  :  the 
poetry  of  Leconte  de  Lisle,  the  novels  of  Flaubert,*  the  whole 
production  of  Saint-Beuve,  Taine,  and  Renan  bear  the  same 
mark.  This  was  only  a  continuation  of  a  certain  aspect  of 
Romanticism,  but  more  thorough  and  less  subjective. 

It  was  in  the  study  of  religions  that  this  historical  attitude  ot 
mind  wrought  the  greatest  revolution.  Hitherto  the  only  alter- 
natives  had  been  dogmatic   assertion  or  destructive  criticism. 

*  Madame  Bovary  and  L' Education  Sentimentale  are  written  exactly  in 
the  same  spirit  and  according  to  the  same  method  as  the  "  historical  resur- 
rection "  SalammhO;  of.  especially  the  scenes  of  the  Revolution  of  1848  in 
L'Education. 


THE   NEW   SPIRIT  165 

The  new  spirit  aimed  at  supplanting  both.  Voltairianism, 
without  information,  without  terms  of  comparison,  without  in- 
sight or  sympathy,  appeared  frivolous  and  vulgar.  Strict 
orthodoxy,  wilfully  blind  to  the  facts  of  evolution,  refusing 
even  to  discuss  the  claims  of  rival  orthodoxies,  seemed  bigoted 
and  ignorant.  A  new  way  was  opened  :  opened  by  the  Germans 
again,*  followed  by  Quinet,  Sainte-Beuve  in  his  Port  Royal,  and 
Renan,  who,  although  coming  late,  made  it  emphatically  his 
own.  It  was  a  winding  and  cautious  path,  which  the  hasty- 
minded  would  spurn ;  yet  it  brought  men  nearer  to  their  goal, 
faith  reconciled  with  science,  freedom  with  reverence,  the 
spiritual  autonomy  of  all  harmonised  into  liberty. 

finally,  we  must  note  the  triumph  of  the  experimental 
method  :  Bacon  dethroned  Descartes.  The  natural  sciences, 
based  on  methodical  observations  rather  than  on  abstract 
reasoning,  made  wonderful  progress.  The  scientists  of  the 
Second  Empire  whose  names  reached  the  general  public  were 
first  of  all  great  experimenters.!  Claude  Bernard  called  phy- 
siology "  experimental  medicine,"  and  in  his  Introduction  to  the 
Study  of  that  science,  he  gave  the  true  Novum  Organum  of  his 
time  (1865).  Pasteur,  who  was  not  yet,  in  the  popular  imagina- 
tion, the  wizard,  the  demigod  that  he  was  to  become,  gave  a 
practical  demonstration  of  the  method  in  settling,  for  many 
years  to  come,  the  vexed  question,  partly  scientific,  partly  meta- 
physical, of  spontaneous  generation.  Berthelot,  whose  intellec- 
tual influence  was  great,  through  his  friendship  with  Eenan,  and 
on  account  of  his  own  breadth  of  interests,  did  his  best  work  in 
chemical  synthesis  :  he  was  an  indefatigable  laboratory  worker. 

The  name  of  Darwin  is  so  indissolubly  linked  with  the  scientific 
revolution  of  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century,  his  books 
attracted  such  wide  attention  and  roused  such  a  heated  contro- 
versy, that  we    are  often  tempted  to  over-emphasise  his  role. 

•  Unless  one  considers  as  a  crude  and  early  attempt  in  that  line  Dupuis's 
Origine  de  tous  les  Cultes.  Creuzer  was  Quinot's  master  ;  Littre  translated 
Strauss ;  Renan  paid  many  a  tribute  to  Germany's  superiority  in  the  scien- 
tific study  of  religion.  The  influence  of  Oriental  studies,  especially  with 
Burnouf,  should  also  be  mentioned. 

t  Excepting  Le  Verrier  (1811-77)  whose  mathematical  "discovery"  of 
Neptune  (181G)  made  a  lasting  impression  upon  the  French  mind. 


166      FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

Whatever  the  claims  of  Darwinism  may  be  in  the  field  of  pure 
science,  its  success  in  the  general  development  of  thought  was  a 
sign  of  the  times,  not  a  starting-point.  All  the  tendencies,  the 
habits  of  mind,  which  are  so  often  carelessly  ascribed  to  Darwin's 
influence,  the  notion  of  evolution  as  well  as  the  experimental 
method,  were  clearly  formed  in  France  before  Clemence  Koyer 
translated  The  Origin  of  Species  in  1862.  On  the  contrary, 
Lyell,  whose  name  has  not  remained  so  famous,  seems  to  have 
impressed  more  deeply  men  like  Eenan  and  Edgar  Quinet. 

Historical  and  natural  sciences  lent  each  other  a  mutual  sup- 
port :  the  former — archaeology,  philology,  comparative  mythology 
— provided  the  notion  of  growth,  which  was  so  fruitfully  applied 
to  the  study  of  the  organic  and  even  of  the  inorganic  world ;  the 
others  taught  that  absolute  adherence  to  facts  which  history, 
on  account  of  its  long  association  with  philosophy  and  litera- 
ture, was  still  prone  to  neglect  ;  they  taught  the  necessity  of 
checking  every  assertion  and  hypothesis  through  experimenta- 
tion ;  they  demonstrated  the  vanity  of  all  unnecessary  and  un- 
provable theorising.  The  combined  influences  worked  wonders. 
The  accuracy  and  disinterestedness  of  science  became  the  ideal, 
not  only  of  critics,  but  of  poets  as  well.  Sainte-Beuve's  field 
was  "the  natural  history  of  minds";  Taine  was  a  "natural- 
ist" ;  Zola,  whose  formation  belongs  to  the  last  years  of  the 
Empire,  claimed  to  write  "  experimental  novels."  Needless  to 
say  that  there  was  much  "literature" — fortunately  for  us — in 
all  this  pseudo-science.  In  certain  cases,  Taine  and  Leconte  de 
Lisle,  for  instance,  some  charm  was  lost — the  charm  of  personal 
warmth  and  spontaneity.  But,  on  the  whole,  the  influence  of 
science  on  French  thought  and  literature  was  wholesome :  it 
provided  a  much-needed  discipline  after  the  orgies  of  senti- 
mental Romanticism.* 

2.  Positivism :  Saint- SiinoUf  Comte^  LittrL 
The   French   philosopher  who  gave  the  new   spirit  its  most 
definite  formula  was  Auguste  Comte,  and  in  his  honour  the  name 

*  It  has  been  said  that  in  the  scientific  spirit  there  were  three  elements  : 
the  rational,  the  idea  of  law,  was  French  ;  the  historical^  the  idea  of  growth 
and  evolubiou,  was  German  (pre-Darwinian)  ;  the  'practical^  the  experimental 
method  was  English. 


THE   NEW  SPIRIT  167 

Positivism  is  often  adopted  to  cover  the  whole  movement.  But 
we  should  not  forget  the  disciples  of  Comte's  forerunner  and 
first  master,  Saint- Simon.  As  an  organised  sect,  the  Saint- 
Simonians  had  long  ceased  to  exist.  Individually,  they  were  still 
prominent  in  many  fields,  and  a  curious  aspect  of  what  is  often 
loosely  called  Positivism — the  religion  of  material  productivity — 
is  directly  traceahle  to  tlieir  influence. 

Saint- Simon,  who  was  a  failure  in  practical  life  and  the  most 
chaotic  of  utopists  in  his  writings,  had  the  intuition  of  two  or 
three  ideas  which  remain  cardinal  points  in  modern  French 
thought.  The  first  was  that,  after  the  long  and  victorious  cam- 
paign of  destructive  criticism  in  the  eighteenth  century,  the  time 
had  come  to  restore,  to  build  up  ;  the  second,  that  no  stable 
society  could  exist  without  a  spiritual  doctrine  and  a  spiritual 
power.  So  far,  he  seemed  to  agree  with  the  Reactionists  and 
the  Theocrats,  with  de  Maistre,  Bonald,  and  Lamennais.  But 
he  also  affirmed  that  the  mediaeval  or  Catholic  synthesis  was  out 
of  date  ;  that  the  world  needed  a  "  New  Christianity  "  based  on 
the  one  unshaken  foundation,  Science  ;  that  in  the  new  world, 
instead  of  priests  and  captains  of  war,  we  should  have  scientists 
and  captains  of  industry.  Thus  science  would  replace  theo- 
logy, industry  would  replace  worship  :  all  for  the  service,  not  of 
a  metaphysical  Being  beyond  the  world,  but  of  that  which  is 
ourselves  and  more  than  ourselves,  real  and  ideal  at  the  same 
time — Humanity. 

Industrialism  and  Humanitarianism  were  thus  both  contained 
in  Saint-Simon's  doctrine,  if  doctrine  be  the  word  for  the  ever- 
shifting  pronouncements  of  a  mystic  Bohemian.  They  were 
reconciled  in  a  sort  of  Socialism  which  made  "  the  welfare  of  the 
most  numerous  and  poorest  class  "  the  first  duty  of  the  State,  and 
suppressed  the  right  of  inheritance,  whilst  reserving  the  greatest 
honours  for  the  captains  of  production.  After  the  extraordinary 
mystic  crisis  of  1829-32,  the  school  was  disrupted.  The  influence 
of  its  humanitarian  teaching  on  the  Romanticists  could  be  easily 
traced,  especially  through  Pierre  Leroux,  and  under  the  Second 
Empire  the  survivors  of  the  sect.  Father  Enfantin  and  Barrault 
for  instance,  still  adhered  to  what  may  be  called  "  the  religion  of 
'48."     But  the   other  side  of  Saint-Simonism,  the  cult  of  in- 


168      FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

dustry,  developed  in  a  more  striking  manner.  Saint- Simon,  in 
this  respect,  had  indeed  been  a  prophet ;  for  he  died  in  1825,  and 
in  France,  at  that  time,  industry  in  the  modern  sense  was  still  in 
its  infancy.  It  was  not  until  the  early  forties,  when  France 
at  last  followed  England  in  railroad  construction,  that  the  new 
power  fully  asserted  itself.  The  Saint-Simonians  found  them- 
selves immediately  in  the  front  rank  of  industrial  leaders ; 
they  carried  into  the  practical  field  their  religious  qualities — 
enthusiasm,  generosity,  a  remarkable  loftiness  of  purpose. 

There  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  Napoleon  HI.  was  ever, 
consciously  and  formally,  a  Saint-Simonian,  but  his  ideal  coin- 
cided with  theirs.  Industrialism  and  Socialism  combined,  such 
was  the  economic  formula  of  the  Second  Empire,  as,  under  a 
mediaeval  mask,  it  is  that  of  modern  Germany.  Free  Trade  was 
a  Saint-Simonian  principle,  and  it  was  a  former  Saint-Simonian, 
Michel  Chevallier,  who,  through  the  direct  action  of  the  Emperor, 
arranged  the  commercial  treaty  of  1860  with  England.  Railroad 
extension  was  a  dogma  with  the  sect :  their  Pope,  Enfantin,  was 
a  capable  railroad  official.  The  first  great  steamship  line  became 
a  Saint-Simonian  concern.  The  Suez  Canal,  in  which  Napo- 
leon III.  took  such  interest,  had  been  promoted  and  surveyed 
by  Saint-Simonians. 

It  is  through  Saint- Simonianism  that  a  number  of  democrats, 
like  Gueroult  and  even  Sainte-Beuve,  were  reconciled  with  the 
Empire.  George  Sand  herself  accepted  the  dogma  of  productivity 
as  a  form  of  Humanitarianism.*  Especially  among  the  liberal 
middle  class,  many  "  Progressists  "  who  professed  to  be  believers 
in  science  were,  first  of  all,  believers  in  industry.  About,  the 
brilliant  but  shallow  representative  of  that  class,  said  :  "I 
am  of  the  religion  of  Littre."  But  his  book  on  Progress  shows 
that  he  was  rather  a  Saint-Simonian. 

Unfortunately,  the  idealism  that  ennobled  the  original  Saint- 
Simonians,  the  touch  of  what  their  detractors  called  *' mystic 
mania,"  did  not  pass  to  their  followers.  The  ideal  of  the  "  cap- 
tains of  production  "  did  not  remain  priest-like  :  it  became  as 
materialistic  and  selfish  as  possible.  Industry  was  not  a  means 
of  social  service,  but  a  short  cut  to  wealth  and  pleasure.     **  I  see 

*  Cf.  Corr.,  iv.  78. 


THE   NEW  SPIRIT  169 

the  salvation  of  all  at  the  end  of  this  career  opened  to  unrestrained 
individualism,"  said  George  Sand:  it  took  all  her  indomitable 
meliorism  to  see  so  far  into  the  future.* 

Yet  we  must  not  forget  that  Saint- Simonianism  was,  with  a 
few  men,  a  sincere  and  genuine,  although  insufficient,  form  of 
religion.  There  are  many  at  the  present  day  for  whom  a 
gigantic  industrial  enterprise  means  more  than  a  money- 
making  proposition  :  they  are  the  ''  mystics  of  industry," 
and  Saint- Simonians  in  their  hearts.  The  religious  capital  of 
mankind  is  not  so  large  that  we  can  afibrd  to  despise  any  part 
of  it,  even  the  least  pure  and  the  most  incomplete. 

From  1818  to  1822,  Auguste  Comte  was  Saint-Simon's  disciple 
and  assistant.  Their  collaboration  continued,  but  not  so  whole- 
heartedly, until  1824  :  at  that  date,  Comte,  who  was  a  highly 
trained  mathematician,  could  no  longer  be  satisfied  with  the 
seductive  but  hazy  theories  of  his  erratic  master.  Henceforth 
he  worked  independently,  and  had  no  connection  with  the  later 
Saint- Simonian  school  or  sect.  His  private  correspondence  shows 
that  many  of  his  most  important  ideas  were  fermenting  in  his 
mind  even  before  he  met  Saint-Simon  ;  but  his  indebtedness  to 
his  master  is  still  considerable.  The  central  doctrine  of  Posi- 
tivism is  that  of  the  "New  Christianity"  :  the  world  must  be 
reorganised,  spiritually  as  well  as  materially,  on  a  scientific 
basis. 

But  whilst  Saint- Simon's  mind  was  riotously  imaginative, 
Comte's  was  essentially  systematic,  and  the  two  cardinal 
features  of  his  philosophy  are  classifications  :  the  law  of  the 
three  states  and  the  hierarchisation  of  sciences. 

The  three  states  are  the  theological,  the  metaphysical,  and 
the  scientific  or  positive.  During  the  first,  man  sought  to 
explain  natural  phenomena  by  the  action  of  Beings,  more  or  less 
similar  to  himself,  endowed  at  least  with  personality  and  will. 
According  to  the  number  of  these  beings,  we  have  fetishism, 
polytheism,    or   monotheism.     When   the    ditficulties   of    such 

•  This  corresponds  with  ono  of  the  meanings  of  the  word  "  positiviste  " — 
matter  of  fact,  practical,  bent  on  immediate,  tangible  results.  Many  objec- 
tions urged  against  Comte's  Positivism  are  true  only  of  dc  Morny's  or 
Schneider's. 


170      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF   YESTERDxiY 

explanations  became  apparent,  the  personality  of  the  governing 
beings  grew  fainter  and  fainter,  until,  instead  of  fetishes,  spirits 
or  gods,  men  spoke  of  "  forces  "  or  "  principles."  This  was  but 
a  dematerialised  and  devitalised  form  of  theology,  * '  a  mythology 
of  abstractions,"  and  constituted  an  intermediate  state  called 
metaphysical.  Finally,  we  are  entering  upon  a  new  state — the 
scientific — in  which  realities  are  studied  in  themselves,  without 
any  interposition  of  imaginary  influences — persons  or  abstrac- 
tions. But  modern  science  is  still  encumbered  with  metaphysical 
notions,  which  are  only  sneaking  dogmas.  To  purify  science 
from  these  anti- scientific  elements  is  our  first  duty. 

The  next  step  will  be  to  co-ordinate  all  branches  of  knowledge 
into  an  organic  whole.  Unity  is  not  only  a  guarantee  of  truth 
— here  we  recognise  the  Frenchman  and  the  Catholic — but  also 
a  condition  of  progress.  Chaotic  efforts  lead  nowhither.  The 
order  proposed  by  Comte  is  at  the  same  time  historical,  logical, 
and  practical.  At  one  end  are  Mathematics,  the  first  sciences 
to  be  brought  to  a  high  degree  of  perfection,  the  simplest  in 
their  essential  elements,  the  most  general  in  their  application. 
At  the  other  stands  Sociology,  the  latest  science,  since  it 
was  "invented,"  or  at  least  baptized,  by  Auguste  Comte  him- 
self; the  most  complex  of  all,  and  also  the  most  special  in  its 
object — social  man..  In  between  come  Astronomy,  Physics, 
Chemistry,  Biology.  Each  science  presupposes  those  that 
precede  it  in  the  list,  adds  something  thereto,  and  limits  itself 
to  a  narrower  field.  In  Comte's  words,  they  are  arranged 
"  according  to  the  order  of  increasing  complexity  and  decreasing 
generality."  The  whole  constitutes  the  framework  of  a  philo- 
sophy and  a  practical  programme  of  studies. 

Such  were  Comte's  leading  ideas  in  the  first  part  of  his 
career  (1824-42).  The  second  part  is  far  more  important 
from  the  religious  point  of  view.  As  a  normal  development  of 
his  reconstructive  principles,  and  under  the  influence  of  his  ideal 
passion  for  Madame  Clotilde  de  Vaux,  he  apparently  reverted  to 
Saint-Simonian  mysticism,  and  organised,  in  all  its  details, 
"the  religion  of  Humanity."  This  last  phase,  however  deeply 
interesting  in  itself,  and  often  misrepresented,  is  not  within  the 
scope  of  the  present  work.     For  it  was  totally  without  influence 


THE   NEW  SPIRIT  171 

on  contemporary  thought.  "  Positivism,"  as  popularly  under- 
stood, was  the  philoso]3hy  of  Littre,  and  Littre  parted  company 
with  his  master  just  on  account  of  this  late  mystico-seutimental 
development. 

The  influence  of  Comte  was  considerahle  :  Sainte-Beuve, 
Taine,  Renan,  the  protagonists  of  French  thought  under  the 
Empire,  were  Comtists  in  more  ways  than  one — but  without 
knowing  it.  For  the  direct  and  personal  authority  of  the  master 
was  indeed  curiously  small,  and  limited  to  the  little  societies 
where  his  true  doctrines  were  preserved.  Guizot,  in  his 
Memoirs^  seems  to  consider  the  philosopher  as  an  obscure 
crank.  Kenan  seldom  mentions  him,  and  hardly  ever  without 
ill-disguised  aversion.  Taine,  a  Positivist  in  everything  but  in 
name,  confesses  his  debt  to  Stuart  Mill,  but  not  to  Comte. 
Pasteur  wrote  to  Sainte-Beuve  :  ''I  have  read  nothing  of  M. 
Comte,  except  a  few  absurd  passages"  (1865).  Sainte-Beuve 
himself,  in  his  enthusiastic  notice  of  Littre  (1863),  seemed  to 
consider  Littre 's  adhesion  to  Comte' s  system  one  of  the  few 
weaknesses  of  his  hero.  It  was  not  until  the  comparatively 
recent  studies  of  Messrs.  Levy-Bruhl  and  G.  Dimias  that  the 
confusion  between  Littreism  and  Comtism  was  at  last  cleared 
away. 

Littre  was  neither  a  gi'eat  philosopher  nor  a  great  writer. 
He  expresses  himself  as  he  thought — clearly,  honestly,  without 
a  spark  of  genius.  Yet  the  life  of  this  unassuming,  undersized, 
ill-favoured  scholar  ranks  high  in  the  free-thinkers'  Golden 
Legendf  for  he  was,  in  the  words  of  Anatole  France,  *'the  most 
learned  and  the  best  of  men."  "  He  was,"  said  Lamartine's 
niece,  Madame  de  Pierreclos,  "  a  saint  who  did  not  believe 
in  God." 

He  was  an  agnostic  and  called  himself  an  atheist.  Extremely 
tolerant  in  his  daily  relations,  he  was  intellectually  blind  to 
anything  but  scientific  rationalism.  *'  The  most  assured  precept 
of  positive  philosophy  is  to  abandon  all  speculations  about  the 
beginning  and  the  end  of  things ;  these  speculations  are  useless 
since  they  are  hopeless;  good  enough  for  the  infancy  of  the 
race,  they  are  unworthy  of  its  maturity."  "  The  result  of 
scientific  investigation  is  that  there  is,  in  the  sequence  of  things, 


172      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

either  in  the  inorganic  or  in  the  organic  world,  no  trace  of 
miracle,  or  of  government  from,  above  ;  any  such  belief  is  hence- 
forth, as  Laplace  said,  a  useless  hypothesis." 

Littre's  open  profession  of  materialism  and  atheism,  coming 
from  a  man  of  such  learning  and  of  such  sterling  moral  worth, 
seemed  in  flagrant  contradiction  with  the  words  of  the  Psalmist  : 
"  The  fool  hath  said  in  his  heart :  There  is  no  God."  Littre 
irritated  the  Theists,  not  merely  as  an  opponent,  but  as  a  monster. 
It  seemed  to  them  that,  in  being  neither  a  fool  nor  a  knave,  he 
was  not  playing  the  game.  Their  hostility  was  such  that  the 
great  lexicographer,  whose  titles  to  a  seat  in  the  Academy  were 
incontestable,  was  kept  for  ten  years  from  this  deserved  reward, 
and  when  he  was  finally  elected,  his  irreconcilable  enemy,  Mgr. 
Dupanloup,  sent  in  his  own  resignation.  A  new  generation  has 
come,  and  Littre's  second-hand  philosophy  is  forgotten.  But 
the  great  scholar,  so  modest,  so  thorough,  so  useful,  who  did 
alone  the  work  of  many  men,  is  still  remembered  with  respect. 
I*'  **  To  love,  to  know,  to  serve,  and,  as  we  advance  in  life,  to  cultivate 
the  memory  of  those  we  have  lost,  such  is  the  foundation  of  our 
moral  existence  and  of  our  lasting  happiness."  These  words,  at 
least,  contain  no  negation,  and  he  lived  nobly  up  to  his  pro- 
gramme:  "To  love,  to  know,  to  serve." 

3.  P. -J.  Prouclhon. 

' '  Le  blaspheme  des  grands  esprits  est  plus  agreable  a  Dieu  que  la  priere         I 
interessee  de  rhomme  vulgaire  ;  car,  bien  que  le  blaspheme  reponde  a  une 
vue  incomplete  des  choses,  il  renferme  une  part  de  protestation  juste,  tandis 
que  r^goisme  ne  contient  aucune  parcelle  de  verity."— Ren  an,  Dialogues 
Philosaphiq^ues,  Preface,  p.  xv. 

In  the  very  title  of  his  article  on  Proudhon  (1858),  Scherer 
declared  Socialism  bankrupt.  Coming  half  a  century  later,  we 
know  that  Socialism  was  not  ruined,  as  one  might  have  expected, 
but  only  transformed,  by  the  scientific  spirit.  Before  1848  it 
had  been  Utopian,  idyllic,  optimistic,  vaguely  Christian,  in  a 
word  Romantic.  After  that  date  it  became  realistic,  matter-of- 
fact,  "  scientific,"  harsh  and  sombre  on  the  whole,  and  often 
frankly  atheistic.  This  new  phase  in  its  evolution  is  generally 
connected   with   the  name  of  Karl   Marx.     In   France,  where 


THE   NEW   SPIRIT  173 

Marxism  penetrated  but  slowly  and  had  no  appreciable  influence 
on  national  thought,  the  chief  agent  of  this  transformation, 
which  remained  incomplete,  was  a  man  w^hom  Karl  Marx  did 
not  like,  and  probably  did  not  understand — P. -J.  Proudhon. 

Uncouth,  diff'use,  chaotic,  over  subtle,  naively  sophistical, 
puzzling  and  provoking  for  bourgeois  and  socialist  alike, 
Proudhon  was  none  the  less  a  noble  soul,  a  stimulating  thinker, 
and  an  admirable  writer.  Historians  of  French  literature  too 
often  pass  him  by,  or  dismiss  him  with  a  contemptuous  paragraph  ; 
he  cultivated  none  of  the  recognised  genres,  and  his  innumerable 
publications  need  thorough  sifting  and  careful  editing.  When 
this  is  done  his  place  will  be  assured  by  the  side  of  Veuillot, 
among  the  few  men  of  the  people  who  showed  commanding 
literary  talent.  Less  varied  in  tone,  less  clear,  less  classical 
than  the  great  Catholic  journalist,  he  is  far  superior  to  him 
in  depth,  seriousness,  and  dignity.  Morally,  both  rank  high  ; 
they  led  pure  and  unselfish  lives.  But  w^hilst  Veuillot,  even 
when  under  the  protection  of  the  Government,  took  pleasure  in 
deriding,  insulting,  slandering  his  enemies,  Proudhon,  even 
when  unjustly  persecuted,  attacked  and  defended  naught  but 
ideas.  He  had  the  earnestness,  the  passion,  and  the  forbear- 
ance of  a  prophet. 

In  religion  Proudhon  stands,  first  of  all,  as  the  most  outspoken 
representative  of  antithcism,  and  many  persons  know  nothing 
more  about  him  than  the  two  oft-quoted  apophthegms  :  "  Property 
is  Theft  "  and  "  God  is  Evil."  And  this  last  was  not  an  isolated 
sally,  a  chance  paradox  :  in  almost  every  one  of  his  books 
Proudhon  took  j)ride  in  his  position  as  a  "  theophobist,"  God's 
personal  enemy.  "  If  God  exists.  He  is  essentially  hostile  to  our 
nature.  .  .  .  We  attain  to  science  in  spite  of  Him,  to  well- 
being  in  spite  of  Him,  to  society  in  spite  of  Him :  every  step 
forward  is  a  victory  in  which  we  crush  the  Deity.  .  .  .  Why 
didst  Thou  deceive  me?  Why  didst  Thou  submit  me  tu  the 
torture  of  universal  doubt  ?  .  .  .  The  Satan  that  lies  in  wait 
for  us,  it  is  Thee !  But  now,  Thou  art  dethroned,  and  Thy 
power  broken.  Thy  name,  for  ages  the  last  word  of  the  scientist, 
the  sanction  of  the  judge,  the  strength  of  the  prince,  the  hope  of 
the  poor,  the  refuge  of  the  repenting  sinner,  Thy  name.  Thy  in- 


174     FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

communicable  name,  henceforth  abandoned  to  scorn  and  curses, 
will  be  hooted  down  among  men.  For  God  means  foolishness 
and  cowardice ;  God  means  hypocrisy  and  deceit ;  God  means 
tyranny  and  destitution;  God  is  Evil."''' 

That  there  is  much  rhetoric  in  this  declaration  of  war  is 
obvious.  This  is  literature,  at  least  as  much  as  religion  and  philo- 
sophy. It  is  an  echo  of  the  Byronic- Satanic  school,  a  belated 
spasm  of  decadent  Romanticism.  Such  *'  sulphuric  "  declama- 
'tions  were  commonplace  enough,  and  for  that  very  reason  harm- 
less. Merely  from  the  literary  point  of  view,  the  passage  is 
noteworthy.  Baudelaire,  Leconte  de  Lisle,  Mme.  Ackermannt 
may  have  borrowed  their  blasphemies  from  Lucretius,  Goethe, 
Byron,  Shelley  ;  but  they  must  also  have  known  Proudhon.  The 
spirit,  the  crescendo,  the  very  words  of  the  tirade,  are  repro- 
duced so  faithfully  in  Leconte  de  Lisle's  masterpiece,  Qdin, 
that  the  resemblance  can  hardly  be  fortuitous. 

Yet  Proudhon  was  not  a  professional  man  of  letters — neither 
a  sophisticated  aesthete  and  sentimentalist  like  Baudelaire  nor 
an  impassible  word-artist  like  Leconte  de  Lisle.  He  was  a  plain 
man  of  the  people,  writing  on  the  spur  of  irrepressible  convictions. 
Insincerity  was  not  his  sin,  but  lack  of  self-control  and  culture. 
Who  has  not  heard  well-meaning  and  earnest  working  men 
express  their  thoughts  in  terms  of  extreme  violence,  simply 
because  they  had  not  the  exquisite  taste  and  the  extensive 
training  of  a  Renan  or  of  an  Anatole  France  ?  Such  is  the  curse 
of  untutored  strength.  Eloquence  was  a  fatal  gift  for  a  man  w^ho, 
not  ignorant,  but  self-taught,  was  easily  carried  away  by  the  flow 
of  his  own  words. 

Proudhon  was  an  original  thinker,  a  blazer  of  trails ;  but  this 
quality  is  too  often  paid  for  by  iconoclasm  and  love  of  paradox. 
More  than  once  his  imagination,  his  dialectics,  led  him  so  far 
astray  that  he  seemed  to  express  exactly  the  reverse  of  what  he 
had  in  mind.  His  book  against  warj  was  considered  by  many  as 
an  apology  for  war.  He  was  conscious  at  times  of  his  failing, 
his  talent  for  rousing  opposition,  his  excessive  violence.     But,  as 

*  SysUme  des  Contradictions  Economiques,  ou  Philosophie  de  la  Misire,  184.6. 
t  Ackermann  was  a  friend  of  Proudhon's,  and  corresponded  with  him  from 
Berlin.  +   War  and  Peace. 


THE   NEW   SPIRIT  175 

a  rule,  this  only  served  to  make  him  proud.  '*  I  became  Terror 
Incarnate.  I  liave  been  preached  against,  put  on  the  stage, 
in  songs,  on  placards,  in  biographies.  I  have  been  blamed, 
insulted,  and  cursed."  Visibly  he  relished  his  Satanic  triumph. 
To  personal  friends  he  would  occasionally  confess  :  "  Such  is  the 
effect  of  my  unfortunate  style.  Unconsciously  and  against  my 
will  things  will  grow  larger,  and  clearer,  and  sharper  under  my 
pen,  so  as  to  bite  into  timid  imaginations." 

But  it  would  be  a  poor  way  of  serving  Proudhon's  fame,  and  of 
understanding  his  message,  thus  to  explain  away  his  most 
characteristic  dictum.  There  is  rhetoric,  and  exaggeration,  and 
pose  in  his  antitheism  ;  there  is  much  earnestness  too.  Merely 
from  the  negative  point  of  view,  such  passion  reveals  a  religions 
soul  which  cannot  quietly  ignore  God,  but  needs  a  violent  effort 
to  reconquer  its  liberty.*  Proudhon  was  one  of  the  few  great 
men  of  letters  of  his  time  and  country  who  read  the  Bible,  f 
He  studied  Hebrew  ;  he  sedulously  annotated  the  Scriptures  ;  he 
had  come  to  the  same  conclusions  as  Strauss  before  he  had  heard 
the  name  of  the  German  historian.  He  was  preparing  a  book  on 
Jesus  when  the  success  of  Kenan's  made  him  give  up  the  idea, 
not  without  reluctance.  His  imagination  was  Christian  and  his 
turn  of  mind  theological.  He  was  a  heresiarch,  a  belated  Gnostic 
rather  than  an  unbeliever. 

And  there  was  a  positive  side.  Proudhon  was  not  a  Nihilist, 
like  Merimee  and  Lcconte  de  Lisle.  He  was  not  a  pessimist 
either.  Amiel  misquoted  his  axiom  when  he  applied  it  to 
Schopenhauer's  philosophy,  "Evil  is  God."  Proudhon  was  an 
independent  Positivist,  a  self-taught  Hegelian  and  Comtist. 
With  Comte  he  held  that  there  were  three  periods  in  the  develop- 
ment of  thought :  the  first  religious,  the  second  sophistic,  the 
third  scientific!  With  the  Romanticists  and  Utopian  Socialists 
he  believed  in  progress  and  in  humanity.  "  Mankind  is  a  being, 
which  has  its  own  functions,  different  fi.*om  our  individualities  ; 
its   ideas,  which  it  communicates  to  us  ;  its  judgments,  which 

*  "  Un  positiviste  profoud6ment  religioux  qui  ue  peut  se  d^prendre  de  Dieu 
que  par  la  violence  et  I'insultc." — Mqr.  Mathied. 

t  Victor  Hugo  and  Vigny  were  also  great  readers  of  the  Bible  ;  not  many 
others. 

\  Contradictions  Economiqnes,  i.  10. 


176      FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

do  not  resemble  ours ;  its  will,  diametrically  opposed  to  our 
instincts  ...  a  being  which,  issued  from  nature,  seems  the 
god  ot  nature,  whose  potentialities  and  laws  it  expresses  in 
a  superior — hence  supernatural — degree."  With  Hegel,  whose 
method  became  the  very  law  of  his  thinking,  he  believes  in  the 
relativity  of  all  human  notions  and  judgments.  Certitude  is 
found  only  in  laws,  because  they  are  mere  relations — and  even 
only  in  laws  of  movement,  not  in  laws  of  existence.  Proudhon 
is  a  relativist  with  an  intensity  of  passion  which  is  at  times 
positively  amusing.  The  absolute,  which  he  also  calls  idealism 
(as  if  that  unfortunate  term  had  not  already  a  sufficiency  of  con- 
fusing meanings) — the  absolute  is  his  personal  enemy.  "  Truth, 
that  is  to  say  reality,  in  nature  as  in  civilisation,  is  essentially 
historical ;  it  is  subject  to  progressions,  conversions,  evolutions, 
and  metamorphoses.  There  is  nothing  fixed,  nothing  eternal  but 
the  laws  of  change.     Truth  is  that  which  changes."* 

If  God  means  the  absolute,  then  war  to  God  !  A  God  in  the 
making — mankind  striving  towards  a  full  consciousness  of  itself — 
such  a  God  he  would  accept ;  or  the  God  of  the  Freemasons, 
such  as  he  himself,  brushing  away  the  effete  Rousseauism  of  the 
Brethren,  reinterpreted  in  terms  of  Positivism.  "  The  God  of 
Freemasonry  is  not  absolute ;  he  is  a  relation,  a  balance  (sym- 
bolised by  the  level,  the  plumb-line,  and  the  square).  In  declar- 
ing war,  according  to  my  perhaps  unfortunate  expression,  on  all 
substantial,  causative,  verbal,  justifying,  and  redeeming  gods, 
Elohim,  Jehovah,  Allah,  Christos,  Zeus,  Mithra,  I  was  unwit- 
tingly in  accord  with  the  unconscious  thought  of  Freemasonry. 
...  I  affirm  that  the  sovereign  and  regulating  idea  of  the  future 
will  be  that  of  Relation,  Balance,  Right."  t 

We  now  begin  to  understand  Proudhon's  antitheism.  "God" 
is  whatever  obscures  truth  and  warps  justice.  It  is  all  a  question 
of  definition.  There  is  some  disadvantage  in  accepting  a 
definition  so  absolutely  contrary  to  general  usage.  Proudhon 
was  aware  of  this,  and  repeatedly  he  relapsed  into  common 
parlance  and  common  sense.  He  duly  apologised  for  this  :  "I 
need  God  as  a  hypothesis,"  he  said,  "in  order  to  show  the 
connection  between  civilisation  and  nature ;  in  order  to  prove  my 
*  Philosophie  du  Progrcs,  1851.  f  De  la  Justice,  &c.,  vi.  76. 


THE   NEW  SPIRIT  177 

goodwill  to  a  mi-iltitude  of  sects,  whose  opinions  I  do  not  share, 
but  whose  anger  I  fear ;  in  order  to  justify  my  style,  for  without 
this  *  indelible  superstition '  we  can  neither  speak  nor  act — 
nor  even  think."  *  It  is  hard  to  see  the  difference  between  such 
an  indispensable  "  superstition  "  and  a  fact  as  certain  as  any 
law  known  to  mankind.  Proudhon's  enemy,  therefore,  is  not 
God,  "  the  mysterious  Creator,  whom  my  conscience,  of  its  own 
accord,  supposes,"  f  but  a  certain  conception  of  God  opposed 
to  his  own ;  not  even  so  much  the  Absolute  as  the  God  of 
Absolutism  :  the  God  of  Caprice  as  opposed  to  the  God  of  Justice, 
the  God  of  the  Church  as  opposed  to  the  God  of  the  Revolution. 

Such  is  the  meaning  of  his  "  magnum  opus,"  Justice  in  the 
Revolution  and  the  Church.  Pyrrhonism  is  spreading :  the 
country  does  not  believe  in  anything,  and  knows  it — 1848  has 
taught  France  at  least  this  one  lesson.  Pure  Liberalism  has 
collapsed ;  authority  is  once  more  our  panacea.  But  neither 
liberty  nor  authority  are  ends  in  themselves ;  they  are  only 
methods.  We  need  a  regulating  principle,  superior  to  both. 
This  Proudhon  calls  Justice — we  may  call  it  God. 

But  wherein  does  this  principle  reside?  Two  solutions  are 
proposed.  According  to  the  first,  the  principle  is  transcendent, 
beyond  man.  Man  knows  it  only  through  revelation,  and  his 
duty  consists  in  obeying  even  when  he  does  not  understand. 
This  conception  is  the  basis  of  all  authorities ;  it  is  the  doctrine 
of  the  Church. 

According  to  the  second  solution,  the  principle  is  immanent ; 
it  IS  within  man,  in  his  very  nature  ;  the  individual  conscience 
is  autonomous.  This  is  the  basis  of  liberty,  the  doctrine  of  the 
Revolution.! 

In  a  serieb  of  twelve  Studies,^  encyclopaedic  in  matter  and 

*  Contradictions  Eco7io7niques,  i.  25.  f  Ibid.,  i.  374. 

\  By  which  is  meant,  not  the  incomplete  movement  of  1789-92,  nor  the 
spirit  of  restlessness  and  blind  destruction,  but  the  eternal  spirit  of  enfran- 
chisement and  progress ;  the  Reformation  in  the  past,  the  Social  Revolution 
in  the  present  and  the  near  future.  For  "  immanence  and  transcendence," 
of.  again  R.  J.  Campbell's  New  Theology  :  "To  restate  Christianity  in  terms 
of  the  immanence  of  God,"  leading,  theoretically,  to  the  divinisatioii  of 
Humanity,  practically  to  Socialism,  just  like  "  Orthodox  "  French  Uumani- 
tarianism. 

§  The  first  and  last  being  Introduction  and  Conclusion. 

12 


178      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

prolix  in  style,  but  teeming  with  ideas,  and  instilled  throughout 
with  the  love  of  righteousness,  Proudhon  compares,  on  every 
great  question,  the  rival  solutions  offered  by  the  Revolution  and 
the  Church,  his  criterion  in  every  case  being  the  notion  of 
Justice.  The  Church  lowers  human  dignity,  for  it  teaches  the 
total  depravity  of  man  as  the  result  of  the  Fall,  and  makes  Right 
consist  in  a  command  from  above.  Duty  in  mere  subjection.* 
It  does  not  condemn  the  present  arbitrary  repartition  of  riches, 
preaches  to  the  poor  resignation  and  to  the  rich  charity,  which 
perpetuates  pauperism.!  In  the  State,  its  doctrine  is  that  of 
divine  right  and  absolutism.  I  As  it  places  the  seat  of  moral 
authority  outside  the  individual,  the  education  it  gives,  by 
repressing  independence  without  being  able  to  suppress  it, 
fosters  hypocrisy.  §  The  Church  has  declared  labour  a  curse 
and  the  servitude  of  the  poor  eternal.  |1  It  has  corrupted  the 
public  mind,  as  its  impossible  craving  for  the  absolute  leads  to 
nothing  but  scepticism  and  sophistry. II  It  ruins  conscience,  for 
any  code  of  ethics  not  based  on  conscience  is  not  moral,  and  no 
[theological]  religion  can  accept  conscience  as  its  basis  without 
committing  suicide.**  It  holds  the  pessimistic  and  demoralising 
view  that  mankind  is  decadent,  instead  of  the  healthful  belief  in 
Progress. ft  It  has  corrupted  love  and  marriage,  by  introducing 
into  them  mystic  and  absolutistic  notions,  the  last  consequence 
of  which  is  lubricity.  H  In  every  case  the  great  culprit,  the  arch- 
deceiver,  the  embodiment  of  all  evil,  Satan,  is  the  notion  of  the 
Transcendent,  of  the  Absolute,  the  Cod  of  the  Church. 

Hence  Proudhon 's  declaration  of  war,  which  was  no  mere 
flight  of  rhetoric,  for  imprisonment,  poverty,  exile  were  its 
clearly  foreseen  consequences.  '*  I  have  taken  as  my  model  the 
Dacian  peasant  §§  speaking  to  the  Senators  of  Rome  ;  I  have 

*  II.  "  Des  Personnes. "  f  III.  "DesBiens." 

t  IV.  "Del'Etat."  §  V.  "  De  I'Education." 

II  VI.  "Du  Travail."  IT  VII.  "  Des  Id6es." 

**  VIII.  "  Conscience  et  Liberte."  ff  IX.  *' Progr^s  et  Decadence." 

I J  X.  and  XI.  "  Amour  et  Mariage  " — two  chapters  which  form  a  book  by 
themselves,  and  would  be  worth  reprinting.     Remarkably  earnest,  paradoxical 
and  stimulating.     Cf.,  in  particular,  his  ideas  on  art — showing  his  contempt 
and  horror  for  sheer  Romanticism. 
§§  Lafontaine's  Paysan  du  Danube. 


THE   NEW  SPIRIT  179 

placed  myself  in  spirit  before  the  Church,  iwith  my  labouring 
man's  smockfrock,  my  peasant's  clogs,  my  journalist's  pen,  and 
my  only  thought  has  been  to  strike  hard  and  straight."  His 
own  faith  is  summed  up  in  one  word,  Justice — superior  even  to 
Love  and  Liberty ;  his  method,  in  this  declaration  :  "  The 
world  probably  forms  an  isonomous,  homogeneous,  harmonious 
whole,  and  the  laws  of  my  reason  are  therefore  the  same  as  the 
laws  of  the  universe.*  I  have  only  to  follow  my  reason,  con- 
stantly checking  it  by  experimentation." 

At  the  close  of  his  book,  the  grim  old  fighter,  with  touching 
simplicity,  extends  his  hand  to  his  adversary,  Bishop  Mathieu  of 
Besan9on,  offering  to  honour  and  follow  the  Church  if  the 
Church,  recognising  God  as  the  growing  consciousness  and 
conscience  of  mankind,  will  accept  the  spirit  of  the  Kevolution  : 
*'  Then  I  shall  recite  with  you,  with  a  fervent  heart,  without  any 
mental  restriction,  and  covering  myself  with  the  sign  of  the 
Cross,  this  magnificent  collect  which  closes  the  evening  service, 
on  Sunday,  in  our  Besan9on  churches :  '  May  the  peace  and 
benediction  of  Almighty  God,  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost, 
Liberty,  Justice,  and  Lore,  and  may  the  visitation  of  His  Angels 
descend  upon  us  ;  upon  this  city  and  all  who  therein  dwell  in  its 
communion  ;  on  the  fruits  of  the  earth  and  on  those  of  labour ; 
on  the  remains  of  the  faithful  who  rest  here  and  everywhere  in 
the  faith  of  Christ  and  of  the  Revolution ;  and  may  His  grace 
keep  in  justice  their  souls  united  with  ours '  (et  animas  eorum 
salvet  et  nostras)."  t 

If  Proudhon's  changing  and  confusing  attitude  could  be  fixed 
in  a  formula,  we  should  say  that  practically  he  was  an  anti-  - 
dutholic,  intellectually  an  agnostic  I* ositiYist,  spiritually  a  believer. 
In  early  life  he  swore  to  devote  himself  "  incessantly,  with  all 
the  energy  of  his  will  and  the  power  of  his  mind,  to  the  complete 
enfranchisement  of  his  brethren  and  companions."  This 
promise  he  kept  scrupulously  to  his  dying  day.  He  had  many 
imperfections,  but  of  the  intellect,  not  of  the  heart.  He  knew 
neither  hypocrisy  nor  fear,  and  he  was  persecuted  for  justice' 
sake. 

*  Cf.  Hegel. 

f  Words  iu  italics  aic  Proudhon's  addition  to  the  Latin  text. 


CHAPTER   II 

THE   POETS  OF   SCIENCE   AND   DESPAIR 

Catholicism,  through  its  alliance  with  political  reaction,  had 
lost  its  mystic  glamour.  The  vast,  generous,  and  stormy  aspira- 
tions of  Romanticism  had  led  to  the  disaster  of  June,  1848. 
Mysticism,  imagination,  and  passion  had  thus  proved  deceptive 
lights.  For  the  nohle  souls  who  would  not  be  satisfied  with 
political  empiricism  and  material  prosperity,  science  remained 
the  only  refuge. 

But  a  cold  and  gloomy  refuge  it  seemed,  after  such  glowing 
hopes.  It  seemed  as  though  poetry  itself  were  crushed  like  the 
idealistic  Republic  of  Lamartine,  the  utopian  Socialism  of 
Leroux,  the  ardent  democratic  Christianity  of  Lamennais.  A 
period  of  poetical  barrenness  was  therefore  expected.  Victor 
Hugo  was  at  the  height  of  his  powers,  but  in  exile,  and  the  last 
glorious  representative  of  a  vanishing  generation.  Lamartine 
and  Musset  had  outlived  their  poetical  faculties.  Vigny  was 
half  forgotten  in  his  "Ivory  Tower."  Poetry  seemed  to  have 
shrunk  to  the  cold  and  minute  perfection  of  Cautier's  Emaux 
et  Camees,  to  the  morbidity  of  Baudelaire's  Fleurs  du  Mai, 
to  the  elaborate  trifling  of  that  lyric  punster  and  acrobat,  de 
Banville.  Three  exquisite  poets,  to  be  sure,  but  three  "  poets  of 
decadence." 

The  antinomy  between  science  and  poetry  remains  to  this  day 
a  favourite  theme  with  fledgling  bards.  About  1850  it  seemed 
even  more  radical  and  hopeless  than  at  present.  Poetry  in  the 
previous  two  or  three  decades  had  become  quasi-synonymous  with 
Romanticism,  and   science,   more    intolerant    than   it   is   now, 

180 


THE   POETS   OF  SCIENCE   AND   DESPAIR    181 

seemed  to  preclude  its  very  essence  :  the  haunting  sense  of 
mystery,  the  free  play  of  imagination,  the  constant  under- 
current and  the  splendid  outbursts  of  passion.  Vigny  himself, 
of  all  the  great  Romanticists  the  most  scientific-minded,  wrote 
in  his  Maison  till  Berger  {The  Shepherd's  Cabin),  "Distance 
and  time  are  conquered.  Science — Traces  round  the  world  a  sad 
and  straight  road. — Our  experience  has  caused  the  world  to 
shrink — And  the  equator  has  become  too  narrow  a  ring. — Chance 
is  no  more  :  each  one  will  glide  on  his  line — Motionless  in  the 
rank  assigned  to  him  at  the  start, — Absorbed  in  his  silent  and 
passionless  computations." 

Such  was  the  impression  of  the  contemporaries  and  of  the 
generation  immediately  following.  Yet,  beside  the  Epigoni  of 
Romanticism  and  the  shallow  worshippers  of  Art  for  Art's  sake, 
there  were  a  number  of  isolated  poets  directly  inspired  by 
philosophy  and  science,  the  intellectual  brothers  of  Comte  and 
Darwin.  Some  were  poets  of  the  first  magnitude,  like  Vigny  and 
Leconte  de  Lisle ;  others  were  simply  distinguished,  like  Mme. 
Ackermann,  Louis  Bouilhet,  Louis  Menard,  Andre  Lefevre,  and 
their  successors,  Sully-Prudhomme  and  Jean  Labor ;  none  is 
contemptible  or  even  indifferent.  To  the  present  day  these 
writers  have  not  received  their  due  meed  of  praise.  Their 
reserve,  their  apparent  coldness,  the  somewhat  hard  and  tense 
beauty  of  their  style,  the  rigour  of  their  thought,  the  sombre  hue 
of  their  religious  opinions,  will  ever  debar  them  from  wide 
popularity. 

1.  Alfred  de  Vigny. 

Alfred  de  Vigny,  the  forerunner  and  the  master  of  this  school 
— if  indeed  we  may  call  this  arbitrary  gi'ouping  of  kindred  but 
unrelated  individualities  a  school — is  not  generally  considered  as 
a  poet  of  the  Second  Empire,  but  as  an  early  Romanticist.  Yet 
several  of  his  best  poems  in  The  Destinies  were  written 
under  Napoleon  III.  ;  the  book — his  masterpiece — and  the 
Diary  of  a  Poet  were  not  published  until  after  his  death  in 
1863 ;  and  the  lonely,  half-forgotten  writer,  who  seemed  to 
belong  to  an  earlier  generation,  expressed  more  powerfully 
perhaps    than    any    other   the    thoughts    and    feelings    of  the 


182      FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

period  we  are  studying.  Yet  we  must  not  believe  that  there 
was  a  second  Vigny  different  from  that  of  1823.  Vigny 
changed  less  than  his  companions.  If  the  Victor  Hugo  of 
1822  and  the  Victor  Hugo  of  1853  could  be  brought  suddenly 
face  to  face  they  would  not  at  first  recognise  their  essential 
identity.  Vigny' s  philosophy  grew,  but  consistently  with 
itself.  His  Moses  and  his  Silence,  at  forty  years'  interval, 
are  different,  and  yet  in  full  harmony.  ''  Absurd  is  he  who 
never  changes,"  runs  the  oft-quoted  French  proverb,  but 
consistency  is  not  always  due  to  narrowness  and  stubbornness ; 
it  may  come  from  genuine  strength  of  mind,  and  from  such 
a  lead  over  one's  contemporaries  that  their  progress  fails  to 
overtake  the  pioneer.  Victor  Hugo  was  perhaps  too  sonorous 
and  ready  an  echo  ;  Vigny  struck  fewer  notes,  but  they  were 
his  own,  and  none  were  ever  purer  or  deeper. 

This  very  consistency  ought  to  warn  us  against  any 
attempt  at  finding  in  Vigny' s  life  a  clue  to  his  philosophy. 
Vigny  could  be  studied  as  ''  a  pure  spirit,"  if  we  may  apply 
to  him  a  favourite  phrase  of  his.  Radically  difi'erent  in  this 
respect  from  the  great  Romanticists,  he  hated  anything  that 
savoured  of  self-revelation.  His  most  personal  poem.  La 
Colere  cle  Sainson,  is  in  the  form  of  a  severely  objective  symbol, 
and  we  have  come  to  wonder  whether  the  allusions  that 
critics  read  into  it  are  not  purely  fanciful.  He  took  elaborate 
precautions  to  prevent  his  private  life  from  being  dragged 
into  the  glare  of  noonday.  '*No  one,"  said  Jules  Sandeau, 
"  has  ever  lived  on  intimate  terms  with  M.  de  Vigny — not 
even  himself." 

It  is  true  that  his  most  cherished  ambitions  were  successively 
disappointed.  He  found  nothing  in  the  army  but  an  obscure 
and  useless  servitude ;  the  princes  he  served  proved  unworthy 
of  his  loyalty :  "In  politics  his  heart  died  in  July,  1830  "  ;  he 
accepted  all  regimes  (Louis-Philippe,  Republic,  Empire) 
without  reluctance  and  without  enthusiasm.  His  private  life 
was  not  a  happy  one.  He  chafed  at  times  under  the  mean  and 
constant  tyranny  of  aristocratic  poverty.  His  wife  never  was  the 
soul-mate  he  deserved ;  she  died  after  years  of  ill-health,  during 
which  he  was  her  devoted  attendant.     He  himself  suffered  for 


THE   POETS   OF  SCIENCE   AND   DESPAIR     183 

twelve  years  from  the  terrible  disease  which,  in  his  Olympian 
language,  he  referred  to  as  "  the  vultm-e  of  Prometheus."  Are 
these  circumstances  the  cause  of  his  pessimism  ?  Let  us  go 
back  thirty  or  forty  years,  to  1823.  Alfred  de  Vigny  was  then 
twenty-six  years  old,  strikingly  handsome,  a  nobleman,  a  soldier, 
and  a  poet,  universally  beloved  and  admired ;  and  yet  it  was 
then  that  he  wrote  his  Moses,  no  mere  Byronic  declamation  like 
Musset's  Holla,  but  the  strongest  and  most  deliberate  expression 
of  utter  weariness,  disenchantment,  and  despair.  And  his  very 
last  poem,  The  Pure  Spirit,  is  full  of  hope  and  of  grave,  deep 
joy.  Life  did  not  make  Vigny  a  pessimist ;  he  conquered  his 
inborn  and  reasoned  pessimism  in  the  face  of  adversity.  There 
is  not  a  nobler  victory. 

The  study  of  Vigny 's  life  does  not  enable  us  to  understand 
the  trend  of  his  thought :  we  shall  find  little  more  enlightenment 
in  his  outward  attitude  to  organised  Christianity.  A  Catholic 
by  birth,  he  never  severed  his  formal  connection  with  the  Church 
of  his  ancestors.*  His  poems  prove  that  he  was  an  assiduous 
reader  of  the  Bible  ;  he  knew  the  Imitation  by  heart,  and  in  his 
old  age,  far  as  he  had  wandered  from  orthodoxy,  he  read  Father 
Gratry's  Sources  with  reverent  appreciation.  Through  his  wife 
and  some  of  his  best  friends,  like  the  **  Puritan"  Camilla 
Maunoir,!  he  was  in  touch  and  in  sympathy  with  Protestantism. 
With  his  inborn  gravity,  his  love  for  tradition  combined  with 
freedom,  his  loft}^  individualism,  he  certainly  seems  more  of  a 
Huguenot  than  of  a  Romanist.  His  very  aj^pearance  in  middle 
age  was  that  of  a  minister.  M.  Leon  Seche  would  place  him 
among  the  Calvinists  of  Catholicism — the  Jansenists.  Reserve, 
gravity,  a  proud  and  gloomy  conception  of  life,  he  had  much  in 
common  with  the  ''Solitaires"  of  Port-Royal.  The  man  who 
admitted  no  one  into  his  intimacy  belonged  to  the  family  of 
those  who,  after  twenty  years  of  life  in  common,  still  used  witli 
one  another  the  ceremonious  form  of  address:  '*  Monsieur."  The 
great  problems  of  Grace  and  Predestination  were  always  present 
to  his  mind  as  to  theirs,  and  are  the  keynotes  of  his  last  and 
best  poems,  Les  Destinees.     His  Diary  often  reads  like  a  con- 

*  Journal  dhm  Poite,  p.  173. 
t  Cf.  Lettres  a  une  Puritaine. 


184     FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

tinuation  of  Pascal's  Thoughts.  Yet  we  do  not  believe  that 
Vigny  would  have  accepted  the  label  Jansenist,  or  that  the 
genuine  descendants  of  the  Solitaires  would  have  recognised  him 
as  one  of  them.  No  direct  filiation,  no  formal  adhesion,  no 
decisive  influence  can  be  proved ;  and  of  the  three  names  of 
sects  which  his  life  and  philosophy  would  naturally  suggest 
— Calvinism,  Jansenism,  Stoicism — he  himself  adopted  the 
last. 

"  When  Death  comes  he  [the  man  of  honour]  looks  on  the 
Cross  with  respect,  fulfils  his  duties  as  a  Christian  as  a  matter 
of  form,  and  dies  in  silence."  *  Such  was  his  own  attitude 
thirty  years  later,  reverent  and  reserved  to  the  end ;  but  long 
before,  without  any  apparent  crisis,  he  had  lost  all  faith  in  the 
religion  which  he  formally  professed.  He  liked  and  respected 
the  priests,  but  he  knew  that  they  had  forfeited  the  spiritual 
leadership  of  the  modern  world,  f  With  the  more  sombre 
aspects  of  Christianity,  ''a  religion  of  despair,"  with  the  sor- 
rowful moments  in  the  life  of  its  Founder,  he  remained  in  fullest 
sympathy ;  but  traditions  and  dogmas  were  in  his  eyes  legends 
and  myths.  These  myths  were  full  of  meaning  and  beauty, 
and  well  worth  preserving ;  |  but  they  were  arbitrary  and  ever 
changing:  "Christianity  is  an  eternal  chameleon."  §  He  was 
a  deeply  religious  man,  but  in  his  own  words,  "  Christianity 
was  dead  in  his  heart."  || 

A  passionate  seeker  after  truth,  he  saw  in  such  a  quest  the 
very  essence  of  religion.  II  '*  God  is  not  a  tribal  law-giver,  and 
a  faith  is  more  than  the  metaphysical  justification  of  a  moral 
code,  more  than  a  transcendental  police-court.  The  men  who, 
like  Descartes  and  Spinoza,  have  tried  to  find  out  the  '  cause 
and  the  end  of  creation '  are  more  deeply  religious  than  those 
who,  like  Augustine,  Bossuet,  Fenelon,  assumed  that  the 
universe  was  made  for  the  sake  of  one  small  people.  The 
former  point  of  view  is  grander,  more  Divine.  It  is  inspired 
by  that  sacred  love  of  truth  which  lifts  the  soul  up  to  the 
Creator  and  the  centre  of  His  creation.     This  immense  per- 

*  Journal  d'un  Poite,  p.  86,  dated  1834.  f  Ibid.,  pp.  40-345. 

+  Ibid.,  p.  146.  §  Ibid.,  p.  93. 

II  Ibid.,  p.  86.  IT  Ibid.,  p.  168. 


THE   POETS   OF  SCIENCE   AND   DESPAIR     185 

spective  far  transcends  the  petty  interests  of  our  human  mole- 
hill, and  even  the  notions  of  good  and  evil,  which  are  lost  and 
drowned  in  it  like  bits  of  straw."  * 

Vigny's  religion,  therefore,  is  neither  one  of  action  nor  one 
of  sentiment,  but  a  religion  of  thought.  Like  Pascal,  he  con- 
siders Thought  as  "the  whole  dignity  of  man."  He  speaks 
of  Ideas  like  a  Spanish  mystic — in  terms  of  almost  sensuous 
love.  Reason  and  Justice,  the  instrument  for  knowing  Truth 
and  the  will  that  Truth  shall  prevail,  are  *'  the  queens  of  his 
thoughts,"!  and  ''the  true  God,  the  strong  God,  is  the  God 
of  Thought."  I 

This  is  Rationalism,  no  doubt :  but  we  are  far  indeed  from  the 
shallow  eighteenth-century  worship  of  reason.  Vigny's  love  of 
truth,  passionate,  disinterested,  neither  self-centred  nor  self- 
satisfied,  implies  a  duty  rather  than  a  boast  ;  it  remains  religious 
even  when  it  seems  to  blaspheme. 

For  pessimism  is  the  first  fruit  of  his  quest,  not  joy  and  peace. 
The  pioneer — prophet  or  poet — is  doomed  to  isolation.  This 
frivolous  and  materialistic  world  kills  the  too  sensitive  soul  with  its 
jeering  indifi'erence  (CJiatterton)^  or  stands  in  awe  of  the  divinely 
inspired  prophet,  who,  in  his  power  and  loneliness,  aspires  "  to 
sleep  the  sleep  of  the  earth  "  (Moses).  He  yearns  for  human 
love — but  Delilah  betrays  him  to  the  Philistines  {Samson's 
WratJi).  Devotion  to  a  high  ideal,  genius,  is  a  curse.  In  the 
pessimism  of  Vigny's  earlier  writings,  this  is  perhaps  the  most 
striking  element. 

Yet  what  man  worthy  of  the  name  would  refuse  the  gift  because 
of  the  curse  ?  "  Weak  souls  are  afraid  of  pure  Enthusiasm,"  he 
said  in  The  ShephercVs  Cabin  :  "  but  why  shrink  from  it  ?  Life  is 
doubly  life  in  its  flame."  And  in  the  Bottle  in  the  Sea  he 
repudiated  any  intention  of  drawing  back  from  the  honour  and 
danger  of  the  poetic  mission  :  "  Courage  !  "  he  writes  to  a  young 
poet.  *'  In  your  holy  devotion  to  the  work  of  the  future  forget 
yourself,  forget  the  man  in  j'ou."  He  would  no  longer  complain, 
as  in  his  youth  ;  for  he  had  "  risen  to  that  high  degree  of  stoic 

*  Journal  d'uyi  Podte,  pp.  168-169,  abridged  translation, 
t  Les  Oracles,  Postscript,  1862. 
X  Bouteille  a  la  Mer,  1858. 


186      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF   YESTERDAY 

pride  "  which  makes  it  seem  "  equally  cowardly  to  groan,  to  weep, 
to  pray."  *  If  a  man  would  adopt  "  the  diviner  point  of  view  "  in 
religion,  his  first  act  must  be  to  renounce  his  personal  interests 
in  this  life  and  in  eternity.  Bent  exclusively  on  knowing  truth, 
the  thinker  must  suppress  his  yearning  for  happiness,  for  glory, 
for  the  sympathy  of  nature  and  of  man.  He  must  lose  all  con- 
cern in  his  individual  destiny.  Pessimism,  in  its  personal  aspect, 
is  thus  silenced  by  stoic  renunciation. 

Yet  self-renunciation  is  but  a  negative  achievement.  Even 
after  the  veil  of  petty  interests  is  removed,  the  world  remains 
dark,  "  without  light,  without  stars,  without  dawn  "  {Mount  of 
Olives).  Man  cannot  abdicate  his  craving  for  truth  and  justice 
without  abdicating  his  dignity  as  man  ;  but  this  craving  is  never 
satisfied.  Our  universe  seems  to  be  ruled  by  blind  and  pitiless 
Fate  {Les  Destinees).  For  Lamartine,  the  heavens  proclaimed 
the  glory  of  God,  the  firmament  His  handiwork  ;  for  Hugo,  not 
consistently,  but  repeatedly,  Nature  herself  was  divine.  Vigny 
was  not  blind  to  Nature's  beauty,  nor  insensible  to  her  soothing 
and  ennobling  influence  ;  indeed,  the  opening  stanzas  of  the 
Shepherd's  Cabin  rival  in  picturesque  precision  the  best  lines  of 
Victor  Hugo,  in  tenderness  and  harmony  the  most  famous  of 
Lamartine's.  But  does  Nature  really  tell  a  wondrous  tale  of 
intentional  beauty  and  beneficent  order?  Men  of  Darwin's 
generation  could  not  answer  Yes.  "Nature  is  our  tomb  as  well  as 
our  mother  ;  she  hears  neither  our  cries  nor  our  sighs  ;  she  is  an 
impassible  stage,  unmoved  by  the  feet  of  the  actors,  indifi'erent  to 
the  comedy  of  our  human  life,  which  vainly  looks  above  for  silent 
spectators."  f 

Vigny  never  doubted  but  there  was  a  God  beyond  Nature  and 
"  its  vain  splendour."  There  is  a  God  :  but  evil,  too,  is  a  fact. 
You  may  call  it  illusion,  guilt,  ignorance,  matter,  fate,  you  may 
disguise  it  under  as  many  names  as  you  please :  you  cannot  deny 
its  existence.  If  God  be  all-powerful,  then  we  are  not  free  : 
fate  "  in  antiquity  and  in  the  enslaved  East,  grace  in  the  Chris- 
tian West,  weigh  upon  us  like  a  leaden  yoke  "  {Les  Destinees). 
If  He  be  just,  can  He  be  responsible  for  undeserved  sufferings,  for 
the  death  of  children,  for  this  whole  world  of  sin  and  sorrow  ? 
*  La  Mort  du  Loup.  f  Shepherd's  Cabin,  abridged. 


THE   POETS   OF   SCIENCE   AND   DESPAIR     187 

{Mo7it  des  Oliviers).  If  He  be  loving,  why  does  He  not  answer 
our  supplications,  why  did  the  noblest  of  His  sons  cry  to  Him  in 
vain  on  Mount  Olivet?  Happy  in  comparison  was  Moses,  the 
prophet  of  old,  estranged  from  men,  but  the  friend  of  God.  The 
second  form  of  Vigny's  pessimism  is  deeper  and  more  hopeless 
than  the  first. 

There  is  an  essential  contradiction  between  the  existence  of  God 
and  the  existence  of  evil.  Yet  we  cannot  deny  either.  Evil 
ofi'ends  our  sense  of  justice  and  love,  and  who  but  God  can  bear 
the  ultimate  responsibility  for  it?  Hence  Vigny's  strange  but 
logical  attitude :  not  atheism  but  antitheism — and  that  on 
strictly  religious  grounds.  God  and  nature  are  alike  in  their 
pitiless  impassibility.  They  may  crush  us,  they  do  not  command 
our  love.  Pascal  had  said  before  Vigny  that  man  was  greater 
than  nature ;  but  he  is  morally  greater  also  than  the  God  of 
orthodox  Theism,  because  he  can  give  his  life  for  a  principle  and 
the  Deity  cannot.'''  Before  such  a  God  our  knees  must  not  bend  ; 
rather  should  we  oppose  Him,  like  the  young  man  who  killed  him- 
self "  to  afflict  and  punish  "  his  Maker,!  like  those  contemners  of 
the  gods,  Ajax,  Satan,  Orestes,  Don  Juan,|  Cain,§  Emperor 
Julian,  !j  whom  the  world  admires  and  loves  in  secret.  The 
influence  of  Byron's  Satanism  on  Vigny's  antitheism  is  obvious. 
But  there  is  not  in  Vigny's  attitude  the  slightest  suspicion  of 
pose.  It  is  the  natural,  inevitable  outcome  of  a  system  ;  it  is  not 
boastful  and  defiant,  but  sorrowful  and  calm.  It  finds  expression, 
not  in  lurid  imprecations,  but  in  grave,  and,  strange  to  say,  almost 
reverent  words  such  as  these  :  "If  it  be  true  that  in  the  Sacred 
Garden  of  Scriptures — The  Son  of  Man  said  that  which  is  reported 
— Mute,  blind,  deaf  to  the  cry  of  His  creatures — If  Heaven  aban- 
doned us  like  an  abortive  world — The  just  man  will  meet  absence 
with  disdain — And  a  cold  silence  will  evermore  be  his  reply — To 
the  eternal  silence  of  the  Deity."  U 

Thus  all  the  works  of  Vigny,  Cinq-Mars,  StcUo,  Servitude  and 
Grandeur  of  Military  Life,  like  Moses,  CJiatterton  or  the  Mount 

*  Tin  Dieu,  Journal  d'un  Po^e,  170;  Cassandre,  J. P.,  265. 

t  J.P.,104.  I  Ibid.,   93.  §  Ibid.,  106. 

II  Daphne,  J. P.,  passim. 

H  Le  Silejice,  postscript  to  Le  Mont  des  Oliviers. 


188      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

of  Olives,  are  indeed  "the  cantos  of  an  epic  poem  on  disillusion- 
ment."* One  by  one,  all  the  old  beliefs  died  in  Yigny's  heart, 
even  the  belief  in  a  just  and  loving  God.     "The  truth  about  life 

"■"^  is  despair."  t     In  the  midst  of  all  these  ruins,  it  seems  impos- 
sible to  find  the  elements  of  a  living  faith. 

Epicureanism  would  seem  the  natural  consequence  of  such 
thoroughgoing  destructive  criticism :  but  Vigny  was  never 
tempted  by  the  cult  of  pleasure,  be  it  high  or  low.  A  soldier  and 
a  gentleman,  he  had  a  substitute  ready  for  the  old  discipline,  now 

"  without  force  ;  and  that  was  Honour.  "  Honour,"  he  said,  "  is 
the  only  basis  of  his  conduct,  and  saves  him  from  crime,  and 
from  all  forms  of  baseness  :  it  is  his  religion,"!  "  his  God  ever 
present  in  his  heart." §  Negatively  it  teaches  him  resignation — 
not  the  whining  resignation  of  the  weak,  but  the  stoic  pride  of 
the  dying  wolf,  the  deep  calm  of  the  captain  conquered  by  brute 
elements,  the  cold  silence  of  the  just  man  in  answer  to  the  eternal 
silence  of  God.  Positively,  it  teaches  him  energy,  the  "accom- 
plishment of  our  long  and  heavy  task."  There  it  stops  :  for  this 
religion  of  honour,  although  less  barren  than  the  religion  of  de- 
spair, is  neither  rich  and  deep  nor  even  clear.  This  aspect  of 
Vigny's  philosophy  has  a  sombre  grandeur  of  its  own,  and  has  in- 
sj)ired  some  of  his  best-known  lines  ;  yet  it  should  not  be  unduly 
emphasised.  In  the  development  of  his  thought  this  stage  is 
but  a  provisional  one,  like  the  practical  code  of  ethics  which 
Descartes  adopted  before  his  system  was  fully  elaborated.  A 
world  of  such  "  men  of  honour  "  as  Vigny  describes  would  be  very 
noble  indeed,  but  cheerless  and  unprogressive.  After  all,  what  is 
honour  ?  The  nobleman's  or  the  soldier's  honour,  which  Vigny 
had  probably  in  view,  is  a  feeling  of  unreasoning  loyalty  to  a 
leader  or  to  a  class — not  incompatible  with  a  certain  looseness  in 
other  respects.  Such  an  honour  may  be  admirable  in  some  of  its 
manifestations  ;  but  if  the  leader  happens  to  be  a  degenerate,  a 
dotard,  or  a  traitor,  if  the  class  has  lost  its  raison  (Vetre,  and  is 
but  a  fossil  in  a  democratic  age,  honour  is  a  dangerous,  narrow 
virtue,  the  sterile  worship  of  prejudice.  It  was  that  mistaken 
sense  of  honour  that  impelled  many  noblemen  to  cross  the  frontier 

*  J.P.,  11.  t  Ibid.,  93. 

X  Ibid.,  86.  §  Ibid.,  94. 


THE  POETS   OF  SCIENCE  AND   DESPAIR    189 

in  1792,  before  their  lives  or  vital  interests  were  threatened,  and 
offer  their  services  to  the  enemies  of  their  country.  The  crimes 
of  certain  officers  in  the  Dreyfus  case  had  their  root,  not  in  dis- 
honour, but  in  that  nefarious  idolatry  the  "  honour  "  of  a  race 
or  caste.  And  how  shifting  and  uncertain  such  "honour"  is? 
even  with  its  most  fanatical  devotees  !  Chateaubriand  had 
prophesied,  and  unwittingly  done  his  best  to  prepare,  the  Kevo- 
lution  of  1830  :  his  sense  of  honour  obliged  him  to  serve,  in  their 
exile,  a  family  which  he  had  helped  dethrone  and  which  he  half- 
openly  despised.  Vigny's  honour,  after  a  velleity  of  action,  was 
more  easily  satisfied — and  who  can  blame  him  ?  Loyalty  to 
objects  unworthy  of  a  man's  allegiance  may  be  an  excusable 
error ;  it  is  not  a  virtue.     Honour  should  cede  before  duty. 

"  Honour,"  Vigny  said  later,  "  is  the  poesy  of  duty."  This  is 
a  wider  and  more  beautiful  definition.  Not  the  soldier,  not  the 
aristocrat  alone,  but  the  humblest  labourer  may  have  his  sense 
of  honour,  if  he  takes  joy  and  pride  in  doing  his  duty.  Honour, 
thus  extended  to  all  men,  means  loyalty,  not  to  a  class,  but  to 
mankind ;  not  to  a  class  leader,  but  to  the  universal  leader, 
the  Ideal. 

Thus  Vigny's  sombre  and  hard  stoicism,  rooted  in  absolute 
pessimism,  becomes,  in  the  ShephenVs  Cahbi,  a  form  of 
Humanitarianism.  Our  duty  is  not  to  ourselves — "  renounce  " 
is  the  first  and  last  word  of  philosophy,  the  essential  condition 
of  "  honour  "  ;  not  to  blind  nature  ;  not  to  a  silent  God  ;  it  is 
to  our  kind,  to  our  fellow-victims,  to  "  the  majesty  of  human 
sufieriugs,"  to  "that  which  passes  and  is  never  seen  again." 
And  this  duty,  through  an  added  touch  of  love  and  pity,  is 
transmuted  into  "honour,"  into  religion. 

The  universal  leader,  the  Ideal,  is  Thought,  our  comforter  and 
our  guide.  Descartes  saw  in  thought  the  proof  of  existence  ;  .^ 
Pascal,  the  basis  of  our  dignity ;  Vigny,  their  true  disciple, 
wrote  :  "  Let  us  find  comfort  for  everything  in  the  thought  that 
we  are  enjoying  our  veiy  Thought — a  joy  which  nothing  can 
take  away  from  us."  *  Thought  can  doubt  all  existence,  except 
its  own  ;  it  can  deny  all  joy,  except  the  joy  of  thinking.  "  The 
contemplation  of  suffering  itself  is  for  the  soul  the  soiuxe   of 

•  c/.P.,  92. 


190      FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

a  secret  joy,  which  comes  from  the  soul's  activity  in  the  idea  of 
suffering."*  Thought  is  the  mythical  lance  which  heals  the  very 
wounds  it  has  inflicted. 

Honour  bids  us  renounce  and  devote  ourselves  to  unselfish 
-  service;  mankind,  suffering  from  the  unjust  sentence  of  an 
unknown  power,  is  the  worthiest  object  of  our  devotion ;  the 
quest  of  truth  is  the  highest  ideal  and  the  surest  comfort.  All 
these  different  strands — religion  of  honour,  of  humanity,  of 
thought — are  combined  in  the  religion  of  science,  for  science  is 
the  research  of  truth  for  the  service  of  man.  Yigny's  last 
poems,  the  all-inclusive  ShephercVs  Cabin,  The  Bottle  in  the 
Sea,  The  Pure  Spirit,  are  splendid  hymns  to  science,  the 
*' divine  elixir,"  the  "queen  of  the  world,"  whose  reign  has 
come  at  last.  And  the  only  true  God  is  the  God  of  Thought,  in 
whose  Word  our  spirits  live  and  move,  as  our  bodies  in  space. 

Such  was  Yigny's  final  faith.     We  can  discern  in  his  spiritual 
make-up  three  elements — pessimism,   stoicism,  intellectualism. 
His  pessimism  was  inborn — darkest,  perhaps,  when  his  life  was 
happiest.     His   stoicism   combined   the   gentleman's    sense    of 
honour,  the  soldier's  idea  of  discipline,  with  the  proud  resigna- 
tion of  a  Christian  not  uninfluenced  by  Port-Eoyal.     His  intel- 
lectualism  was    intense,   passionate,    and    amounted    to    idea- 
worship  ;  but  he  never  was  a  blind  devotee  of  reason   reduced 
to  logic  or  common  sense,  or  of  materialistic  science.     These 
three  elements  co-existed  in  him  from  the  first,  in  the  poems  of 
1828,  and  all  are  found  in  The  Silence  and  The  Pure  S2nrit,  his 
swan-song.     They  are  irreducible  :  to  take  any  of  the  three  as 
the  single  centre  of  Yigny's  thought  would  be  unfair  to  its  rich 
complexity.     No  new  essential  element  was  added  in  the  course 
of  forty  years ;  but  Yigny's  thought,  although  ever  consistent, 
was    not    immovable.     The    interaction    of    the    three    main 
elements  produced  many  combinations.     Broadly  speaking,  we 
may  say  that  his  pessimism  was  uppermost  in  his  earlier  works, 
of  which  Moses  may  be  accepted  as  the  best  type ;  his  stoicism 
found  its  clearest  expression  in  The  Death  of  the  Wolf  (1843) ; 
whilst  The  Bottle  in  the  Sea  (1858)  and  The  Pure  Spirit  (1863) 
embodied  his  faith  in  the  "  God  of  Ideas." 

*  J. P.,  92. 


THE   POETS   OF  SCIENCE   AND   DESPAIR    191 

And  if  that  faith  seems  to  us  proud,  austere,  and  cold,  let  us 
not  forget  that  Vigny's  pessimism,  his  stoicism,  and  his  intel- 
lectualism  were  alike  tempered  with  love  and  pity,  that  Divine 
pity  which  inspired  his  two  longest  poems,  Eloa  and  The 
Shepherd's  Cabin:  pity  for  all  suffering,  pity  for  all  that  lives 
but  a  moment ;  pity  even  for  sin  and  for  Satan — supreme  guilt, 
therefore  supreme  misfortune — passionate  pity  which  never  sinks 
into  sentimentality,  but  urges  us  to  willing  sacrifice.  Gentleness 
is  sweetest  in  the  strong :  the  tenderness  of  Vigny's  lines  to 
Eva — the  symbol  of  all  our  afflictions  and  aspirations — is  all 
the  more  exquisite  for  the  dark  background  of  his  philosophy. 


Alfred  de  Vigny  left  no  direct  disciples.  In  literature  and  in 
thought,  as  in  real  life,  he  remained  isolated  in  his  Ivory  Tower. 

Yet  there  is  a  strong  temptation  to  make  up  a  Vigny  school  of 
philosophical  poetry  with  the  names  of  Leconte  de  Lisle, 
Mme.  Ackermann,  Sully-Prudhomme,  Jean  Labor.  None  of 
the  recognised  schools  in  French  literature — Pleiad,  Cenacle, 
or  Parnassus — would  offer  such  intellectual  homogeneity.  In  all 
these  poets  we  find  the  same  rare  elements  as  in  Alfred  de 
Vigny  :  loneliness  and  despair,  reserve  and  stoic  pride,  learning 
and  faith  in  science,  and  that  unconquerable  mystic  yearning 
which,  combined  with  inborn  pessimism  and  modern  scepticism, 
leads  to  antitheism  rather  than  to  irreligion. 

2.  Leconte  de  Lisle. 

If  by  art  we  mean  the  constant  and  complete  mastery  of  one's 
instrument,  Leconte  de  Lisle  was  a  greater  artist  than  Vigny. 
There  are  blemishes  in  the  finest  marble,  and  we  could  point 
out  many  a  harsh  line — perhaps  intentional,  many  a  weak  one 
— without  apparent  excuse — iu  his  four  volumes  ;  but  he  remains, 
on  the  grand  scale,  what  Gautier  was  in  miniature :  the 
faultless  craftsman. 

The  perfection  of  his  art,  and  his  own  absolute  faith  in  the 
conceptions  which  it  embodied,  gave  him  in  his  lifetime  a  degree 
of  fame  and  influence  which  Vigny  never  enjoyed.  His  name 
reached   but   slowly  the   general   public,    with   whom  he  neve^. 


192     FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

became  popular ;  but  among  poets  he  was  supreme.  Within  his 
narrower  field  he  was  even  more  absolute  a  ruler  than  "  the 
Father  in  exile."  Hugo  was  the  god,  but  Leconte  de  Lisle 
was  the  high  priest,  the  more  potent  of  the  two. 

It  was  Leconte  de  Lisle's  art  that  won  for  him,  among  the 
poets  of  his  generation,  the  uncontested  monarchy  of  wit.  Yet 
not  his  art  alone.  As  an  apostle  of  Art  for  Art's  sake, 
Theophile  Gautier  was  first  in  the  field  {Mile,  de  Maiipin,  1835), 
and  his  Emaux  et  GameeSy  published  one  year  before  the  Poemes 
Antiques,  gave  both  the  precept  and  the  model  of  flawless 
workmanship.  Theodore  de  Banville,  whose  first  poems  came 
out  some  ten  years  before  Leconte  de  Lisle's,  was  the  most 
thoroughgoing  exponent  of  the  doctrine,  and  the  modern 
*'  Legislator  of  Parnassus."  But  Gautier  and  Banville  were 
amiable  epicures,  and  even  in  a  frivolous  age  leadership  seldom 
falls  to  any  but  earnest  men.  The  Second  Empire  was  not  all 
noise  and  glitter  :  it  was  a  time  of  scientific  investigation  and 
religious  conflict.  The  head  of  the  Parnassian  school  was  no 
mere  rhymester,  but  the  contemporary  of  Taine  and  Renan,  a 
scholar,  a  historian,  a  philosopher.  We  had  to  make  this  point 
clear,  because  among  the  many  "  cults  "  and  substitutes  for 
religion  which  were  tried  in  the  nineteenth  century.  Art  for  Art's 
sake  was  one  of  the  most  assertive,  and  spiritually  the  most 
barren.  The  worship  of  form  led  absolutely  nowhere.  If 
Leconte  de  Lisle  commands  our  respectful  attention,  it  is  not 
because  of  the  marmorean  splendour  of  his  poetry,  but  because 
of  its  message.  Who  would  not  prefer  to  see  noble  thoughts 
always  clothed  in  beautiful  words  ?  But  a  religion  whose  first 
article  of  faith  is  :  "I  believe  in  rare  and  sonorous  rhymes,"  and 
whose  prayers  end  with  :  "  Deliver  us  from  double  genitives  !  " 
cannot  expect  to  be  taken  very  seriously.* 

Leconte  de  Lisle  tried  to  introduce  historical  rigour  into 
imaginative  literature.  The  Romanticists  had  made  a  similar 
attempt  under  the  influence  of  Walter  Scott,  among  others  : 

*  Be  it  understood  that  what  we  say  of  Art  for  Art's  sake  as  a  religion  need 
not  apply  to  Art  for  Art's  sake  as  an  esthetic  doctrine  :  the  autonomy  of  art 
is  a  defensible  cause.  Also,  that  Art  for  Art's  sake  is  not  quite  the  same 
thing  as  -aSstheticism  (cf.  Baudelaire),  or  the  cult  of  beauty  (cf.  Renan). 


THE   POETS   OF  SCIENCE   AND   DESPAIR     193 

Hugo,  Vigny,  the  elder  Dumas  took  no  little  pride  in  the 
scrupulous  accuracy  of  their  information.*  But  they  were 
untrained  and  full  of  passion.  Romantic  history  became  a 
gorgeous  masquerade.  All  characters,  ancient,  mediaeval  and 
modern,  were  self-portraits  of  symbols  :  Moses  and  Chatterton 
are  Vigny  himself;  Antony  and  Hernani  are  twin  brothers. 

With  such  a  travesty  of  truth  Leconte  de  Lisle  had  little 
patience.  The  poet  of  a  scientific  age  must,  then,  be  disinterested 
and  impassible.  All  teaching  and  preaching,  any  obtrusion  of 
his  own  personality,  are  out  of  place  in  his  work.  Objective, 
*'  positive  "  truth  is  his  only  goal.  Not  only  the  material  details 
of  the  events  he  relates  will  be  more  definite  and  more  accurate 
than  in  the  poems  of  his  predecessors,  the  Romanticists,  but  he 
will  be  infinitely  more  respectful  than  they  of  psychological  and 
spiritual  truth.  Such,  at  least,  are  his  claims  :  if  they  were 
justified,  all  his  poems  on  Hindu,  Greek,  Norse,  Hebrew,  and 
Christian  myths,  legends,  and  episodes  would  tell  us  nothing 
about  their  author  ;  they  would  be  a  gallery  of  historical  pictures 
without  any  bearing  on  the  religious  thought  of  our  time,  and 
this  part  of  our  work  would  remain  unwritten. 

But  although  Leconte  de  Lisle  aspired  to  scientific  impassi- 
bility, he  was  bound  to  fail  in  the  attempt,  as  he  was  a  genuine 
and  a  great  poet.  His  personality,  theoretically  banished  from 
his  productions,  is  seen  almost  everywhere  in  them,  and  the  parts 
from  which  it  is  absent  are  already  dead,  if  they  may  be  said  ever 
to  have  lived.  He  reveals  himself  through  the  very  selection  of 
his  subjects  ;  many  of  his  poems  deal  with  religious  themes — we 
find  everywhere  evidence  that  the  men  of  that  time  were  more 
vitally  interested  in  such  questions  than  we  are  at  the  present 
day.  Be  they  never  so  varied  from  the  historical  and  geogra- 
phical points  of  view,  these  poems  have  an  essential  unity  of 
spirit :  they  are  almost  uniformly  hard  and  sombre.  We  had 
almost  said  a  unity  of  purpose — few  are  those  that  do  not  teach 
the  doctrines  of  despair.  In  this  respect  even  the  omissions  of 
Leconte  de  Lisle  are  instructive  :  when  translating  iEschylus's 
trilogy,  the  Oresteia,  he  could  not  bring  himself  to  include 
the  third  part,  the  Eumenides,  which  represents  atonement,  for- 
•  Cf,  Hugo's  prefaces  to  Marie  Tudor  and  Buy  Bias. 

13 


194      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

giveness,  and  peace.  His  boasted  impassibility  does  not  keep 
him  from  anathematising  the  Middle  Ages  in  general,  and 
the  Catholic  Church  more  particularly,  with  a  concentrated 
vehemence  by  no  means  ''  scientific  "  : — 

"  In  every  one  of  your  execrable  minutes, 
O  centuries  of  murderers,  cowards,  and  brutes, 
The  shame  of  this  ancient  globe  and  of  humanity, 
Cursed  be  ye,  cursed,  for  all  eternity."  * 

Nay,  in  some  of  his  most  striking  poems  Leconte  de  Lisle 
did  the  very  thing  for  which  he  so  haughtily  rebuked  Alfred  de 
Vigny :  he  selected  a  historical  or  a  legendary  character,  and 
used  him  as  a  mouthpiece  or  a  symbol ;  he  placed  a  purely 
modern  subject  in  an  archaeological  setting,  and  the  thoughts 
of  a  nineteenth-century  "  anti-clerical  "  on  antediluvian  lips. 
The  result  may  be  admirable,  but  the  author  of  Qdin  has  no 
right  to  reprove  the  author  of  Moses, 

Leconte  de  Lisle  Avas  a  man  of  intense  feelings  ;  there  is 
even  a  tender  note — all  too  rare,  but  exquisite — in  such  poems 
as  Le  Mancliy  and  Le  Frais  Matin ;  the  very  sonnet  in  which 
he  deprecates  self-revelation  (Les  Montreurs)  is  full  of  irre- 
pressible passion.  There  was  a  man  behind  that  cold, 
glittering  mask  of  art  and  science :  and  that  man  was  not  a 
Hindu  ascetic,  nor  yet  an  ancient  Creek,  as  he  would  have  us 
believe  at  times,  but  one  of  us,  intensely  modern  in  his  thoughts 
and  feelings,  with  all  the  doubts,  the  bitternesses,  and  the 
enthusiasms  of  his  time  and  of  his  race — the  younger  brother  of 
Leopardi,  Vigny,  and  Schopenhauer. 

Pessimism  is  the  keynote  of  Leconte  de  Lisle's  philosophy : 
a  pessimism  less  systematic  perhaps  than  Alfred  de  Vigny' s, 
but  more  violently  passionate  and  more  incurable.  In  some  of 
the  Poemes  Antiques  there  still  are  gleams  of  hope  :  Nature  is 
still  able  to  comfort  and  to  cheer  ; — 

•♦  O  sea,  0  dreamy  woods,  pious  voices  of  the  world, 
You  have  answered  me  during  my  evil  days  ; 
You  have  appeased  my  barren  melancholy, 
And  you  sing  eternally  in  my  heart."  f 

*  Les  Slides  Maudits,  Poimes  Tragiques. 
t  Poimes  Antiques,  '*  Nox." 


THE   POETS   OF  SCIENCE   AND   DESPAIR     195 

Yet  that  faith  in  nature  is  soon  discarded  as  an  illusion  : 
"  Nothing  answers  in  boundless  space  but  the  sterile  echo  of  our 
eternal  desire."*  "  Nature  makes  sport  of  human  sufferings," 
he  said  after  Vigny.f  "  She  is  naught  but  an  illusion  and 
a  snare."  I  Nature  is  indifferent :  mankind  is  worse.  The 
splendour  of  antiquity  has  vanished  for  ever ;  the  poet  despises 
the  modern  world  for  its  cowardice  and  its  avarice,  for  its  aim- 
lessness  and  its  corruption. §  Life  is  a  burden,  and  the  dead 
should  be  envied,  "for  they  are  liberated  from  life,  and  no 
longer  know — the  shame  of  thinking  and  the  horror  of  being 
men !  "  |1 

For  such  universal  misery,  who  can  be  responsible  but  the 
Maker  of  all  things  ?  No  radical  pessimist — Leconte  de  Lisle 
no  more  than  Vigny  or  Mme.  Ackermann — can  escape  anti- 
theism  :  the  omnipotent  ruler  of  an  evil  world  must  himself  be 
evil.  Centuries  of  gloomy  Christianity,  condemning  life,  beauty, 
joy,  distrusting  or  despising  nature,  preaching  eternal  suffering 
as  an  integral  part  of  the  universal  scheme,  had  made  such  a 
conclusion  inevitable.  The  God  who  is  a  loving  Father  only  to 
the  "small  number  of  the  elect,"  and  has  doomed  the  majority 
of  the  race  to  everlasting  punishment  for  a  crime  not  their  own — 
such  a  God,  in  modern  eyes,  is  a  monstrous  idol.  Vigny  \md 
formulated  this  verdict  in  his  quiet,  dignified,  and  final  manner : 
the  silence  of  the  just  is  an  irrevocable  condemnation.  Leconte 
de  Lisle  expanded  and  symbolised  it  in  his  masterpiece,  the 
sombre  and  grandiose  poem,  Qdin.  11 

The  murderer,  rising  from  his  sleep  of  ten  centuries,  answers 
the  angel  of  the  Lord  : — 

"  Did  I  create  life  and  evil  ? 
Said  I  unto  the  inert  clay  :  '  Sufier  and  weep '  ? 
Have  I  created  with  the  ban  the  longing, 
The  burning  thirst  of  unattainable  good 
And  the  deathless  dream  in  ever-dying  time  ? 


*  Poinies  Antiques,  *'  Dies  Irae." 

t  Po^mes  Barbares,  "  La  Fontaine  aux  Lianes." 

I  Ravine  Saint-Gilles,  §  "  Aux  Modsrnesi." 

II  Formes  Tragiques,  '*  A  un  Po^te  mort." 
II  Translated  by  F.  P.  Anderson. 


196      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

Bidden  the  will  and  punished  the  fulfilment? 

Oh  misierv !     Did  I  say  to  the  implacable  Master, 

The  jealous  God,  tormentor  of  the  world  and  of  the  living, 

Who  chides  in  the  thunder  and  rides  upon  the  winds : 

'  SureJy  life  is  good  !     I  would  fain  be  bom  ! ' 

What  was  life  to  me  at  the  price  Thou  exactest  for  it?" 

Yes,  Grod  is  responsible,  and  we,  His  A-ictims.  should  not 
cringe  and  fawn  before  the  Tyrant,  but  confess  to  His  face  our 
indomitable  belief  in  justice,  greater  than  He  : — 

'*  I  shall  remain  erect !  And  from  eve  to  mom 
And  from  dawn  to  dusk  never  shall  I  still 
The  tireless  cry  of  a  despairing  heart ! 
The  thirst  for  Justice,  0  Cherub !  devours  me. 
Crush  me :  else  I  shall  never  yield." 

The  Creator  repenteth  Himself,  thus  confessing  that  His  work 
was  not  good.  The  Flood  will  annihilate  the  world.  But  Cain, 
the  victim  and  the  avenger,  will  not  have  it  so.  The  creation  of 
man  was  God's  crime  ;  let  it  be  His  curse  !  The  murderer, 
voicing  the  spirit  of  eternal  justice  in  rebellion  against  fate 
and  caprice,  will  save  mankind.  The  Ark  is  built,  the  Deluge 
will  be  in  vain.  And  the  Tormentor  will  finally  be  exorcised 
from  His  creation  : — 

"  And  God,  jealous  God,  who  hidest  Thy  face, 
Who  didst  lie.  when  Thou  saidst  Thy  work  was  good, 
My  breath,  0  Kneader  of  the  ancient  clay, 
One  day  shall  exalt  Thy  living  victim. 
Thou  shalt  say  to  him:  Adore!     He  will  answer:    No! 
From  hour  to  hour,  Jehovah  !  his  mutinied  strength 
Shall  loose  the  grasp  of  Thine  arm, 
And  flinging  down  Thy  yoke  as  a  vile  bond. 
The  things  created,  free  in  conquered  space, 
Will  no  more  hearken  when  Thou  speakest  to  them. 
To  bring  to  naught  the  world  that  denies  Thee, 
Thou  shalt  cause  blood  to  flow  like  a  sea, 
Shackles  of  iron  to  bite  deep  into  flesh. 
In  the  endless  horror  thou  shalt  cause  to  flare 
The  gulf  of  Hell  beside  the  shrieking  p>Tes. 
But  when  Thy  priests,  iron-jawed  wolves, 
Glutted  with  human  flesh  and  thin  with  rage. 
Shall  seek  the  guerdon  of  the  ofiered  holocaust, 
Rising  before  them  from  the  ashes  of  the  just, 


THE   POETS   OF   SCIE>XE   A^'D   DESPAIR     197 

I  will  scourge  them  with  immortal  scorn. 

And  the  little  children  of  the  avenged  nations, 

Knowing  Thy  name  no  more,  shall  laugh  in  their  cradles. 

I  will  tear  down  the  silly  vault  of  Heaven, 

And  he  who  seeks  Thee  there  shall  find  Thee  not. 

And  that  shall  be  my  day !     And  from  star  to  star. 

The  happy  Eden  long  regretted 

Shall  see  Abel  risen  and  sheltered  upon  my  heart ; 

And  Thou,  dead  and  sewn  up  in  the  burial  shroud, 

Shalt  fall  away  to  destruction  in  Thy  barrenness." 


Perhaps  few  Anglo-Saxon  readers  would  read  Cain  to  the  end. 
The  symbol  which  the  poet  adopted  would  be  to  them  mispeak- 
ably  offensive.  Yet  Cain  is  no  sensational  and  insincere 
blasphemy  of  the  Baudelaire-Pachepin  type  ;  it  is  even  free  from 
the  element  of  defiance,  the  desire  of  puzzling  and  horrifving 
the  Philistines,  which  detracts  from=  the  spiritual  importance  of 
Proudhon's  explosive  paradox  :  "  God  is  Evil/'  Cain  is  the 
passionate  cry  of  a  soul  that  hungers  and  thirsts  after  righteous- 
ness. Nowhere  does  Leconte  de  Lisle's  admirable  verse  give 
such  a  true  religious  ring.  Leconte  de  Lisle  spumed  the  precau- 
tion that  Yigny,  who  had  thought  of  a  similar  subject,  noted  in 
his  Diary:  *'  Place  the  scene  in  a  Pagan  setting.*'  Listead  of 
"  lahveh,"  let  us  read  "Jupiter,'*  and  the  piece,  in  its  -Eschy- 
lean  grandeur,  will  be  unimpeachable.  But,  for  whoever  con- 
siders the  first  chapters  lq  Genesis  as  nothing  more  than  an 
Oriental  legend,  the  use  of  the  myth  is  perfectly  legitimate,  and 
has  no  sacrilegious  intent.  A  second  objection  may  be  raised 
against  the  symbolical  value  of  the  poem.  Leconte  de  Lisle 
is  visibly  attacking,  not  God  Himself,  if  by  God  we  mean  supreme 
Justice  and  Truth,  but  a  certain  conception  of  God,  responsible 
for  the  ''  gloom  and  horror"  of  many  centuries,  and  now  more 
and  more  openly  discarded  even  by  conservative  believers.  If 
it  be  so,  if  it  be  nothing  but  a  phantom,  a  creation  of  primitive 
and  diseased  brains,  a  theological  nightmare,  that  he  is  aiming 
at,  is  not  his  tragic  earnestness  out  of  proportion  with  the  end  in 
view?  In  such  a  case  we  think  that  the  old  Stendhalian  gibe 
would  have  been  sufficient :  ''  God's  {that  god's)  only  excuse  is 
that  he  does  not  exist."  If  the  God  meant  in  Cain  is  real,  then 
the  poem  is  not  so  much  sacrilegious   as   nonsensical,    for  we 


198      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

cannot  conceive  of  a  God  morally  inferior  to  His  creatures,  and 
ceasing  to  exist  as  the  result  of  their  denying  Him.  If  that 
God  is  merely  an  idea,  then  all  that  righteous  indignation  is 
wasted.  In  fact,  the  word  God  here  means  both  a  reality  and  a 
mere  notion.  It  stands  for  the  awful  mystery  of  creation,  with 
its  elements  of  sin  and  pain,  the  curse  that  undeniably  has  lain 
heavy  upon  mankind  since  the  world  began,  the  seeming  contra- 
diction between  our  sense  of  justice  and  the  facts  of  this  universe. 
This  Power,  unknown  in  its  essence,  all  too  real  in  its  manifesta- 
tion, is  that  against  which  man's  highest  instincts  bid  him  fight. 
To  call  such  a  Power  God  is  a  blasphemy ;  but  for  this 
blasphemy  Leconte  de  Lisle  is  not  responsible.  It  is  well- 
meaning  believers  who  with  their  monstrous  schemes  have 
made  God  identical  with  the  creator  of  evil.  The  golden  age 
prophesied  by  the  poet  will  see  at  the  same  time  the  laying 
down  of  a  fearful  spectre  that  hindered  progress,  and,  through 
man's  efforts,  the  filing  away,  the  falling  apart,  of  material 
shackles — sin,  misery,  ignorance,  and  disease.  It  will  be  the 
reign  of  science  and  of  brotherly  love,  the  kingdom  of  the 
true  God. 

Cain  is  supreme  and  almost  unique  among  the  works  of  Leconte 
de  Lisle,  because  it  preaches  action  and  offers  a  prospect  of  hope. 
The  evil  principle,  the  God  of  theologians,  will  finally  be  con- 
quered. Unhappily,  this  is  only  a  passing  gleam  in  Leconte  de 
Lisle's  sombre  horizon.  He  does  not  belong  to  the  greater  pessi- 
mists, to  the  "  twice-born  souls  "  who,  through  thought,  action,  or 
faith,  overcome  their  own  despair.  More  extreme  than  Vigny  in 
the  expression  of  his  distress,  he  does  not  rise  to  Vigny's  active 
and  tender  stoicism,  still  less  to  his  ultimate  faith  in  "  the  God 
of  ideas."  We  miss  the  exquisite  sympathy  and  pity  of  The 
Shepherd's  Cabin,  the  lofty  spirit  of  service  of  TJie  Bottle  in 
the  Sea. 

Leconte  de  Lisle  is  a  misanthropist  as  well  as  an  antitheist 
and  a  contemner  of  Nature.  Such  a  position  is  illogical.  If 
God  be  evil,  then  we  ought  to  love,  pity,  and  help  man,  his 
irresponsible  victim.  If  we  despise  Nature's  indifference,  then 
we  should  bow  to  the  supremacy  of  human  thought  and  "  the 
majesty   of  human    suffering."      Leconte    de    Lisle's    haughty 


THE   POETS   OF   SCIENCE   AND   DESPAIR     199 

stoicism  is  impressive,  but  narrow  and  selfish.  Love  of  art 
and  love  of  science,  apart  from  love  of  man,  cannot  be  a  rule  of 
conduct.  If  the  poet  writes  beautiful  lines,  if  the  scientist 
gathers  curious  facts,  not  for  the  enjoyment  or  betterment  of 
their  fellow-creatures,  but  for  the  satisfaction  of  their  own  pride, 
what  are  they  but  refined  egoists  ?  We  know  full  well  that 
Leconte  de  Lisle  was  not  such.  Had  he  not  laboured  in  the 
field  as  a  patriot,  as  a  Republican,  as  a  free-thinker,*  he  would 
still  be  amply  justified  by  the  ennobling  influence  of  his  poetical 
work.  But  we  cannot  all  be  supreme  artists,  and  there  are  more 
pressing  duties  than  polishing  precious  words  while  expressing 
intensest  scorn  for  ''the  carnivorous  rabble  "  of  our  fellow-men. 
Pessimism  and  its  concomitants  are  all  negative.  On  the 
positive  side  of  Leconte  de  Lisle' s  philosophy  we  find — nothing. 
Systematically  nothing.  He  borrowed  from  Hinduism  the  notion 
of  universal  illusion  ending  in  universal  nirvana.!  I  am 
afraid  that  his  French  readers,  unaccustomed  to  such  grandiose 
and  hazy  metaphysical  dreams,  saw  little  more  in  them  than  in- 
exhaustible poetical  themes.     The  piece — 

'*  The  secret  of  life  lies  in  closed  tombs  : 
That  which  no  longer  is,  is  such  only  because  it  has  been, 
And  the  final  annihilation  of  beings  and  matter 
Is  the  only  reason  of  their  reality," 

with  its  elaborate  technique  and  its  abysmal  depths  of  nonsense, 
seemed  to  the  average  French  mind  an  excellent,  transcendental 
joke,  all  the  better  for  its  being  so  solemn  in  tone. 

After  all,  Alexandre  Dumas  Jils  voiced  the  wholesome  senti- 
ment of  the  race  when,  taunting  Leconte  de  Lisle  with  his 
eternal  aspiration  to  the  "  impassible  peace  of  the  dead,"  that 
peace  "which  life  has  troubled,"  he  asked  him  whether  such 
peace  was  not  within  his  reach.  One  wonders  what  call  such  a 
radical  contemner  of  life  had  to  be  alive.  A  pessimistic  philo- 
sophy, replies  M.Jules  Lemaitre,  does  not  lead  to  suicide,  because 
we  rise  superior  to  our  ills  and  woes  by  the  very  act  of  compre- 

•  Cf.  his  poems,  A  Vltalie,  Le  Soir  d'une  bataille,  Le  Sacre  de  Paris  ;  his 
Catechisme  Popiilaire  Republicain  ;  his  Petite  Histoii'e  du  Chris tianisme. 
■f-  La  Maya,  Poihiies  Tragiqu-cs. 


200      FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF   YESTERDAY 

bending  them.  Such  a  feeling  of  superiority  is  in  itself  a  source 
of  pride,  of  peace,  of  joy.  True.  Vigny  had  made  that  dis- 
covery long  before,  and  that  one  positive  element — the  joy  of 
thinking,  even  about  our  misery — gradually  softened  and  almost 
absorbed  his  pessimism.  It  is  probable,  as  Lemaitre  surmises, 
that  Leconte  de  Lisle  derived  much  pleasure  from  his  gloomy 
view  of  life.  Like  the  valetudinarian  old  lady,  ^'  he  enjoyed  poor 
[spiritual]  health."  But,  afraid  perhaps  of  marring  the  sombre 
unity  of  his  works,  he  tried  to  keep  that  pleasure  a  secret.  If 
such  be  the  case,  Leconte  de  Lisle's  pessimism  is  either  a  fraud 
or  at  least  a  form  of  sentimentalism  not  more  admirable  than 
Rene's.  Hence  the  feeling  of  incompleteness,  of  onesidedness, 
which  the  four  volumes  of  Leconte  de  Lisle  leave  with  us. 
We  see  the  man  behind  the  glittering  verse — else  he  would 
not  be  such  a  poet — but  we  do  not  see  the  whole  man,  nor 
perhaps  the  best  there  is  in  him.  Imagination,  passion,  learning, 
unrivalled  skill  were  his,  yet  something  stijGfens  all  his  gifts  and 
repels  our  sympathy  :  whether  coldness  of  heart  or  narrowness 
of  soul  we  cannot  tell. 


CHAPTER  III 

CRITICS   AND   HISTORIANS:  SAINTE-BEUVE,    TAINE  * 

1.  Sainte-Bcuve. 

After  1848,  the  age  of  spiritual  adventures  was  over  for  Sainte- 
Beuve.  He  had  studied,  tried,  and  abandoned  everything. 
The  Cenacle  and  its  Romantic  religiosity,  Saint-Simonism, 
Lamennais's  liberal  Catholicism,  Vinet's  Protestantism,  the 
Jansenism  of  Saint-Cyran  and  de  Sacy,  had  successively  appealed 
to  his  insatiable  curiosity.  At  times,  the  Voltairians  and 
the  Eclecticists — Beranger,  Thiers,  Cousin — might  think  he  was 
one  of  themselves;  but  he  also  did  homage  to  Chateaubriand 
at  his  little  court  of  L'Abbaye-aux-Bois,  and  gave  hopes 
even  to  Mme.  Swetchine,  de  Maistre's  convert  and  Lacor- 
daire's  adviser.     He  had  been  in  every  case  a  most  promising 

•  Scberer  rightly  belongs  to  this  group  of  Positivists  :  at  the  end  of  his  long 
and  painful  evolution  he  was  the  most  thoroughgoing  relativist  of  them  all. 
(Cf.  L'lllusion  M6taphysique,  Etudes  sur  la  LitUrature  Contemporaine,  iii.) 
We  give  him  no  place  in  this  chapter,  because,  while  he  was  a  close  rcasoncr, 
an  excellent  scholar,  and  a  brilliant  writer,  he  showed,  in  this  second  part 
of  his  career,  no  commanding  originality.  Admired  and  respected,  he  had 
no  distinct  traceable  influence.  Bishop  Dupanloup,  in  his  Avertissement, 
1863,  in  his  UAthdisme  et  le  Piril  social,  1866,  denounced  the  erudite  but 
modest  scholar,  Alfred  Maury,  along  with  Littr^,  Renan,  and  Taine.  But 
this  excellent  specialist  does  not  belong  to  us.  Victor  Duruy,  the  historian 
of  Rome,  the  great  Minister  of  Public  Education,  also  bitterly  attacked  by  the 
*'  Clericals,"  was  in  full  sympathy  with  this  group  of  men,  although  his 
position  in  a  repressive  Government  was  a  difficult  one,  and,  but  for  the 
enlightened  protection  of  the  Emperor,  would  have  been  untenable.  Cf.  his 
Note-i  et  Souvenirs,  ch.  iii. — MonExamende  Conscieyice  ;  ch.  xii'i .,  Rapports  avec 
le  Clergi.  Havet  should  be  mentioned  as  occupying  a  middle  ground  between 
the  reverent  historians  of  religions  like  Renan  and  the  bitter  critics  of  the 
Voltairian  type. 

aoi 


202      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

catechumen,  willing,  earnest,  and  supremely  intelligent.  Ever 
on  the  eve  of  taking  the  decisive  step,  he  would  ever  disappoint 
the  expectations  of  his  friends,  and  pass  on  to  a  new  experience. 
Of  all  men,  he  was  the  most  unstable,  the  most  elusive  and 
slippery ;  his  mind  was  a  kaleidoscope  or  a  series  of  dissolving 
views,  and  himself,  according  to  his  admirers,  a  Proteus — a 
chameleon  according  to  his  detractors.  Sincere  withal,  in 
his  own  undefinable  way ;  disinterested  in  his  evolutions ; 
apparently  striving  for  the  highest ;  a  confessed  and  confirmed 
deserter,  and  yet,  in  this  respect  at  least,  not  despicable. 

Henceforth,  he  would  no  longer  roam :  the  quest  was  at 
an  end.  "I  have  much  played  and  much  dreamed  in  my 
life,"  he  said.     "Now  that  I  am  nearing  the  term,  I  think.'''* 

This  defines,  at  least  negatively,  the  religious  attitude  of 
his  last  twenty  years  :  he  was  not  an  emotionalist,  not  a  mystic, 
and  not  a  believer  in  traditional  authority  :  he  was  a  thinker 
pure  and  simple,  a  free-thinker.  But  free-thought  is  a  Church 
with  innumerable  sects,  from  the  blank  nihilism  of  Merimee 
to  the  quasi-Protestantism  of  Quinet.  At  the  time  of  his 
death,  Sainte-Beuve  was  one  of  the  pontiffs  of  scientific 
materialism  ;  but  that  was  a  late  development,  and  not  wholly 
spontaneous.  His  mind  was  too  subtle  and  too  mobile  to 
be  permanently  satisfied  with  the  most  rigid  and  narrowest 
of  all  creeds.  There  are  no  more  metamorphoses  in  Sainte- 
Beuve  from  1848  to  1869  ;  but  there  is  a  constant  evolution 
and  the  old  many-sidedness  has  not  disappeared. 


The  outward  changes  in  Sainte-Beuve's  religious  attitude 
were  partly  the  manifestation  of  this  inner  development,  partly 
the  result  of  political  conditions.  Few  indeed  were  the  French 
men  of  note  in  the  nineteenth  century  vv-hose  formal  religion 
was  not  affected,  or  even  controlled,  by  secular  considerations. 
The  Church  was  a  party,  at  least  a  social  tendency;  every 
party,  on  the  other  hand,  had  its  ideal  and  its  creed,  its 
mysticism  and  its  orthodoxy,  like  a  sect.  Such  a  condition 
will   seem   monstrous   to   readers    unfamiliar    with    conditions 

*  Causeries  du  Lundi,  xi.  517. 


CRITICS  AND   HISTORIANS  203 

on  the  Continent,  or  with  the  history  of  their  own  race :  we 
act  on  the  belief  that  the  individual  soul  and  the  State  should 
be  governed  on  totally  different  principles.  But  many  earnest 
men  in  the  past  were  not  able  thus  to  keep  separate  the  believer 
and  the  citizen  within  themselves :  to  Jesuit,  Covenanter,  and 
Socialist  alike,  religion  and  politics  are  one. 

This  of  course  applies  to  Sainte-Beuve  only  in  a  limited 
degi'ee,  for  he  was  the  reverse  of  a  fanatic.  But  his  attitude 
was  much  more  decided  and  consistent  in  politics  than  in 
religion,  although  he  never  was,  strictly  speaking,  a  party 
man.  A  son  of  the  lower  bourgeoisie,  closer  to  the  people 
than  to  the  aristocracy,  he  had  the  two  ruling  passions  of  his 
class.  He  loved  equality — that  is  to  say  that  he  hated  privilege 
and  was  impatient  of  any  assumed  superiority — and  he  loved 
order,  which  was  congenial  to  his  industrious  and  somewhat 
unheroic  nature.  Thus  he  was  a  democrat,  but  neither  a  liberal 
in  the  doctrinaire  sense,  nor  a  demagogue. 

A  warm  supporter  of  the  opposition  under  Charles  X.,  he 
applauded  the  Revolution  of  1830,  but  preserved  his  inde- 
pendence under  Louis-Philippe.  The  new  aristocracy  of  wealth 
which  ruled  cynically  under  the  Citizen-King  was  more  obnoxious 
to  him  than  the  dethroned  aristocracy  of  blood,  and  the  assump- 
tion of  infallibility  quite  as  intolerable  in  Guizot  as  in  Polignac. 
The  fall  of  Louis-Philij^pe  in  Februaiy,  1848,  did  not  therefore 
cause  him  any  regrets.  But  neither  did  the  new  Republic, 
with  its  splendid  promises,  fill  him  with  enthusiasm.  He 
was  no  longer  a  Romanticist,  but  a  cool,  sceptical  critic.  He 
was  a  middle-aged  bourgeois,  somewhat  sluggish  and  timorous,* 
who,  suddenly  disturbed  in  his  habits  of  life,  cursed  between 
his  teeth  that  unwarrantable  intrusion  of  the  ideal.  Like  a 
large  number  of  his  compatriots,  disgusted  with  Legitimists, 
Orleanists  and  Revolutionists  alike,  he  began  to  look  upon 
Louis-Napoleon  as  the  possible  saviour  of  society.  In  1849, 
when  he  came  back  from  his  year's  lecturing  at  Liege,  he  began 
the  wonderful  series  of  his  Monday  Talks  {Caitseries  dii  Lundi) 

*  That  he  showed  any  cowardice  in  those  days  is  pure  slander  on  the  part 
of  Louis  Veuillot.  He  did  not  leave  Paris  for  Liege  until  October,  18i8, 
when  all  danger  was  over. 


204      FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

in  Le  Constitutionnelf  a  paper  of  Bonapartist  tendencies.* 
Three  years  later,  after  the  Coup  d'Etat,  on  the  eve  of  the 
Empire,  his  famous  article  Regrets,  aimed  at  the  Orleanist- 
Liberal  coalition,  stamped  him  as  an  unhesitating  supporter 
of  the  new  regime.  The  article,  biting  and  wonderfully  keen, 
was  perhaps  ungenerous  at  the  time.  But  to  ascribe  Sainte- 
Beuve's  evolution  to  mere  spite,  or  fear,  or  selfish  interest, 
is  partisan  nonsense.  A  critic,  a  man  of  quiet  and  fastidious 
social  tastes,  who,  with  his  eyes  open,  breaks  with  the  ruling 
coterie  in  the  Academy,  with  the  University,  with  the  salons, 
and  with  the  literary  Press,  is  certainly  no  selfseeker. 

Sainte-Beuve  thus  became  a  semi-official  journalist  of  the 
Empire,  and  as  in  those  years  Napoleon  III.  was  hailed  by  the 
Church  as  a  new  Constantino,  another  Theodosius,  the  critic  was 
exceedingly  careful  not  to  offend  Catholic  susceptibilities.  All 
chances  of  conversion  were  over  for  him :  the  tone  of  the  last 
two  volumes  of  his  Port-Royal  left  no  doubt  about  that.  But  his 
references  to  Christianity  were  always  reverent ;  Catholic  sub- 
jects were  treated  with  broad  sympathy;  there  was  a  note  of 
melancholy,  almost  of  despair,  in  the  closing  lines  of  Fort-Royal, 
which  has  a  decided  religious  ring. 

But  after  the  Italian  war  of  1859,  when  the  Ultramontanes 
broke  with  the  Empii-e,  Sainte-Beuve  was  free  to  follow  his 
natural  tendency,  which  would  lead  him  farther  and  farther 
away  from  the  Church.  The  New  Monday  Talks  {Nouvelles 
Causeries  du  Lundi),  which  appeared  in  Le  Constitutionnel  from 
1861  on,  were  bolder  than  the  first.  They  opened  with  an 
onslaught  on  de  Laprade,  the  poet  laureate  of  the  Catholic- 
Liberal  opposition  [September,  1861]  ;  a  long  smd  feline  study  of 
a  "  Mother  of  the  Church,"  as  he  dubbed  Mme.  Swetchine, 
soon  followed  [November,  1861].  The  fine  article  on  "  Father 
Lacordaire  and  Four  Religious  Moments  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century  "  (March,  1863),  the  warm  tribute  to  Littre  at  the  time  of 
his  conflict  with  Mgr.  Dupanloup  (June- July,  1863),  the  favourable 
review  of  Kenan's  Life  of  Jesus  (September,  1863),  were  unequi- 
vocal in  tone  and  purpose  :  Sainte-Beuve,  the  prudent,  shifty 
Sainte-Beuve,  had  boldly  stepped  into  the  arena. 

*  And  after  1862  in  Le  Moniteur,  the  official  organ  of  the  Government. 


CRITICS   AND   HISTORIANS  205 

In  1865  he  was  made  a  member  of  the  Imperial  Senate,  the 
most  conservative  political  body  that  France  has  ever  known. 
But  his  new  dignity  failed  to  check  his  now  rapid  evolution.  It 
would  be  excessive  to  say  that,  almost  as  soon  as  he  became  a 
Senator,  he  threw  himself  into  the  opposition  :  *  there  is  no  such 
marked  difference  between  his  articles  of  1864  and  his  articles  of 
1866.  But  his  high  position  and  the  piquant  contrast  between 
the  opinions  of  his  colleagues  and  his  own  gave  additional 
weight  to  his  words  ;  whilst  under  the  influence  of  age,  indepen- 
dence, authority,  with  a  sense  of  an  impending  crisis  for  his 
country  and,  for  himself,  unmistakable  warnings  of  approaching 
death,  he  was  growing  more  and  more  radical  and  assertive.  In 
his  speech  of  May  19,  1868,  in  reply  to  the  Bishops  in  the 
Senate,  he  stood  for  his  "own  diocese,"  that  of  common  sense, 
free-thought,  and  science ;  he  assumed  the  position,  not  merely 
of  a  combatant,  but  of  a  leader. 

During  these  few  years  of  militancy  Sainte-Beuve  tasted 
genuine  popularity  for  the  first  time  in  his  life  ;  to  what  extent 
he  com-ted  this  popularity,  what  influence  it  had  on  his  evolution, 
is  not  easy  for  us  to  ascertain.  There  was  a  noticeable  difference 
in  his  style,  which  became  every  year  less  subtle,  less  involved, 
more  direct,  and  more  forcible  :  it  does  not  appear  that  his 
essential  beliefs  were  materially  affected  thereby. 

•  .  .  •  •  • 

Political  conditions  had  thus  made  Sainte-Beuve  one  of  the 
high  priests  of  anti-clericalism  and  free-thought.  A  curious 
avatar,  no  doubt,  for  the  agile  and  many-sided  critic,  whose  mind 
seemed  to  grow  more  active  and  broader  with  advancing  years  ! 
But  behind  the  outward  evolution  we  have  to  trace  another, 
more  gradual,  deeper,  more  complex,  parallel  with  the  first  only 
to  a  certain  extent.  The  author  of  Port- Royal  never  became  a 
mere  Voltairian  scoffer  or  a  pseudo-scientific  materialist. 

His  mighty  work,  Fort-lioyal^  took  twenty-five  years  of  his 
life  (1834-59),  and  remains  one  of  the  great  religious  books  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  Beligion,  it  is  true,  was  not  its  avowed 
or  its  primary  subject.  Sainte-Beuve  wanted  to  study,  with 
Port-Royal  as  a  centre,  the  whole  literature  of  the  classical  age ; 
*  Professor  G.  M.  Harper,  Samk-Beuve,  p.  349. 


206      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

and,  especially  after  the  climax,  the  chapters  on  Pascal — social 
history,  with  innumerable  digressions,  anecdotes  and  portraits — 
was  an  important  part  of  his  scheme.     Yet,  if  Sainte-Beuve  had 
been  prompted  exclusively  by  intellectual   curiosity,  he  would 
have  spent  less  time  on  the  Jansenists.     There  were  many  other 
attractive    fields,    either    richer,    or    more    popular,    or    more 
picturesque.     But  for  Pascal  and  for  the  spiritual  significance  of 
Port-Royal,    the    annals   of  the   community   would   be   dreary. 
Sainte-Beuve,  without  ever  forgetting  his  main  purpose  and  his 
special  qualifications,  which  were  of  a  literary  nature,  did  full 
justice  to  the  religious  import  of  his  subject.    He  himself  studied 
extensively,  dived  into  recondite  theological  works,  and  displayed 
this  unexpected  learning,  especially  in  the  first  two  volumes,  with 
a  complacency  dangerously  akin   to  pedantry.      But  more  im- 
portant for  our  purpose  than  all  theological  lore  is  the  central 
problem  of  the  book — the  drama  of  the  author's  life,  of  many 
men's    lives,   the  duel  between    the  "  natural  man  "    and   the 
Christian,  the  sceptic  and  the  believer,  Montaigne  and  Pascal, 
That  this  debate  was  not  for  Sainte-Beuve  merely  an  academic 
one  can  hardly  be  doubted.     Yet  he  attempted  later  to  cover  his 
traces,   and  made  light  of  his   several  religious   "excursions." 
'*  I  nibbled  at  the  bait,"  he  said,  "  but  escaped  the  trap."     And  he 
would  have  us  believe  that  eighteenth-century  materialism,  "in 
all  its  crudity,"  was  from  the  first  the  true  foundation  of  his 
philosophy.     The  evidence  of  his  own  writings  is  more  convincing 
than   his    denegations.      There   is   in   Port-Royal   more   than 
historical   insight   and   impartiality ;    more   than   the  aesthetic 
sentimentalism  which  he  may  have  learnt  from  his  friends  of  the 
Cenacle  ;  more,  also,  than  the  turbid  sensuous  religiosity  which, 
it  is  said,  his  unlawful  passion  fostered  in  him  :  there  is  a  depth 
and  an  earnestness  which  personal  experience  alone  can  give. 
Pascal  and  Montaigne  were  indeed  fighting  for  his  soul. 

Sainte-Beuve,  materialist  though  he  was,  had  a  keen  sense  of 
a  duality  in  himself.  He  was  a  strange  assemblage  of  a  wonder- 
ful intellect,  strong  and  pitilessly  clear,  with  a  physical  nature 
brutal  enough  to  degrade  him  in  his  own  eyes,  not  strong  enough 
to  rule  him  entirely  and  to  intoxicate  him  with  the  animal  joy  of 
living.      Thus  he   had,  more   than   better  men,  the  essential 


CRITICS   AND   HISTORIANS  207 

Christian  experience  :  the  consciousness  of  the  fall,  the  "  convic- 
tion of  sin,"  the  sentiment  of  the  total  depravity  of  man.  He 
was  a  divided  self,  the  angel  and  the  beast  at  war  within  him, 
and  the  angel,  too  often  worsted,  greatly  needing  some  aid  from 
above,  the  saving  grace  of  God.*  In  all  modern  French  history, 
the  men  who  had  most  radically  condemned  the  natural  man, 
most  exclusively  relied  on  the  grace  of  God,  were  the  Jansenists. 
Sainte-Beuve  did  not  write  his  five  volumes  for  the  sole  purpose 
of  debating  in  his  own  mind  the  eternal  question :  Nature  or 
grace  ?  But  this  question,  with  its  immediate  bearing  on  his 
o^vn  destiny,  coloured  the  best  parts  of  his  work. 

Although  Port-Royal  was  not  completed  until  1859,  the 
struggle  was  over  before  1848 :  Sainte-Beuve  was  not  a  believer. 
Was  he  ever,  in  the  words  of  Vinet,  "  convinced,  but  not  con- 
verted," persuaded  of  the  truth  of  Christianity,  but  prevented  by 
his  lower  nature  from  professing  the  truth  he  knew  ?  It  seems 
that  exactly  the  reverse  would  be  more  probable :  Sainte-Beuve 
was,  theoretically  at  least,  more  converted  than  convinced.  He 
wanted  a  belief,  a  doctrine,  a  discipline  which  would  give  his  life 
unity  and  dignity  :  his  lower  nature  was  willing  to  be  subdued,  but 
his  critical  intellect  prevented  him  from  accepting  the  solution 
ofi'ered  by  Jansenism  and  Calvinism.  That  solution  seemed  to  him 
historically  baseless,  philosophically  arbitrary.  In  practice,  it 
had  inspired  noble  but  one-sided  lives,  and  led  to  monstrous 
excesses,  to  harshness  and  self-mutilation.  The  radical  condem- 
nation of  the  "  natural  man  "  would  lead  us  back  to  the  exalta- 
tion of  monasticism,  disease,  and  insanity.! 

The  opposite  view  is  absolute  optimism,  the  belief  in  the 
goodness  of  man  and  Nature,  the  joyous,  large-hearted  pan- 
theistic naturalism  of  Rabelais,  or,  in  our  own  days,  Utopian 
Socialism,  idyllic  anarchism,  the  humanitarian  faith  of  the 
Romanticists.     Sainte-Beuve  had  been  one  of  the  heralds,  if  not 

*  In  this  he  was  not  unlike  Victor  Hugo  :  but  Hugo,  a  better  man  on  the 
whole,  less  introspective,  more  active,  easily  self-satisfied,  took  refuge  in  his 
immense  pride,  substituted  contrast  for  conflict,  and  found  it  an  efiective 
literary  device. 

t  We  are  inclined  to  believe  with  M.  d'Haussonville  that,  far  from  convinc- 
ing him,  his  controversy  with  the  Lausanne  Protestants  finally  ruined  his 
faith. 


208  FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

one  of  the  protagonists,  of  Romanticism ;  he  was  to  a  certain 
extent  a  democrat,  perhaps  even  a  socialist :  he  hailed  Napoleon 
ni.  as  a  "  Saint-Simon  on  horseback."  But  when  Christianity 
had  become  impossible  for  him,  he  did  not  go  over  to  the  other 
side.  He  was  too  clear-sighted,  too  critical,  to  share  in  the 
illusions  of  a  group  of  men  which  he  had  abandoned  ten  years 
before ;  his  native  pessimism  as  to  human  nature  was  only 
growing  deeper  with  age,  experience,  and  the  spectacle  of  social 
convulsions.  Thus,  cut  adrift  from  Supernaturalism  and  Na- 
turalism alike,  Sainte-Beuve  was  left  alone,  without  pilot  or  star. 

What  his  formal  attitude  towards  religion  was  during  these 
years  of  transition  (1848-59),  we  have  already  seen:  it  was 
non-committal,  respectful,  on  the  whole  sympathetic.  In  the 
absence  of  any  commanding  faith  of  his  own,  he  had  to  be  con- 
tent with  substitutes  and  make-shifts.  One  of  these  was  *'la 
religion  des  honnetes  gens,"  a  code  of  morals  based  on  honour, 
common  sense,  moderation,  good  taste,  the  "  religion,"  if  the 
term  will  hold,  of  Montaigne,  Moliere,  Lafontaine,  Voltaire,  on 
their  ordinary  level.  This  philosophy,  which  found  its  best 
expression  in  the  famous  litany:  "Aimer  Moliere  .  .  ."*  is 
very  different  from  Pantheistic  naturalism.  It  is  saner,  quieter, 
but  more  commonplace ;  safer,  but  less  generous,  less  optimistic. 
It  is  the  attitude  of  middle-aged  men  who  know  life  too  well,  and 
have  neither  fear  nor  hope.  Not  to  be  a  dupe,  not  to  be  a  bore, 
such  is  the  beginning  and  the  end  of  wisdom.  This  does  toler- 
ably well  for  "  d'honnetes  gens  " — sane,  healthy,  moderate, 
educated,  well-to-do  people,  so  long  as  circumstances  remain 
normal.  But  for  saint,  sinner,  or  poet,  such  a  "  religion  "  is  not 
even  a  philosophy  :  it  is  a  blank. 

On  a  higher  plane,  both  metaphysically  and  spiritually,  was 
the  absolute  scepticism  which  Sainte-Beuve  professed  at  intervals 
during  the  same  years.  Although  the  answer  is  only  Montaigne's 
''Que  sgais-je  ?"  at  least  the  great  question  is  asked.  Some- 
times this  scepticism  was  self-satisfied,  almost  joyous  :  moral 
happiness,  he  says,  can  be  conceived  under  three  forms  :  Plato  on 
Cape  Sunium,  Lucretius  or  Epicurus,  St.  Paul  or  Jesus.  '*A 
fourth  form,  scepticism,  which   understands  everything,  which 

*  Nouveaux  Lundin,  v. 


CRITICS  AND  HISTORIANS  209 

transforms  itself  successively  into  every  one,  and  which  conceives 
human  thought  as  dreaming  everything  and  as  creating  the 
object  of  its  dream :  Montaigne,  Hume."  *  Montaigne  had 
decidedly  conquered  Pascal. 

Scepticism  often  leads  to  intellectual  apathy :  Sainte-Beuve's 
was  of  a  different  order.  It  served  admirably  his  ruling  passion, 
Curiosity — the  only  master  or  mistress  to  whom  he  remained 
faithful  unto  death.  Just  as,  with  Chateaubriand,  pride  was  the 
man  himself,  and  assumed  all  forms,  from  virtue  to  silliness,! 
curiosity  with  Sainte-Beuve  was  his  very  nature,  and  ranged 
from  scandal  and  gossip  to  mystic  yearnings.  For  a  long  time, 
it  was  purely  Epicurean  :  "  fond  of  the  rarest  hidden  flowers,  he 
wished  to  gather  the  secret  and  deep  poetry  which  they  gave 
forth."  I  Gradually,  it  became  more  intellectual ;  his  ideal  was 
no  longer  to  feel  in  order  to  enjoy,  but  primarily  to  understand ^ 
his  mind  remaining  ''  free,  serene,  cold,  impartial."  Yet  this  is 
merely  a  substitution  of  judicial  for  dramatic  dilettantism  :  plea- 
sure remains  the  goal.  But,  with  the  long  years  of  study,  the 
early  charm  vanished  ;  the  severer  joy  of  knowing  and  under- 
standing was  itself  exhausted  ;  now  curiosity  ceased  to  be  selfish. 
It  became  a  virtue — the  love  of  truth,  the  scientific  spirit.  '*  It 
seemed  to  me  that,  failing  the  poetical  flame  which  gives  colour, 
but  deceives,  there  was  no  more  legitimate  and  honourable 
employment  for  the  mind  than  to  see  things  and  men  as  they 
are  and  to  express  them  as  one  sees  them,  to  describe,  all  round 
one's  self,  as  a  servant  of  science,  the  varieties  of  the  species, 
the  diverse  forms  of  human  organisation,  whose  moral  aspects 
are  strangely  modified  in  society  and  in  the  artificial  maze  of 
doctrines."  "  You  [Jansenists]  were  continually  speaking  of 
truth,  and  you  sacrificed  everything  to  that  which  appeared  to 
you  under  that  name  :  I  have  been  in  my  own  way  a  servant  of 
truth,  as  far  as  I  could  reach  it."  § 

But  what  is  Truth  ?  The  nev.'  devotee  of  Science  is  still  a 
sceptic  ;  his  latest  idol  is  as  hollow  as  any,  and  the  last  words 
are  discouragement  and  disgust.  "  How  limited  is  our  sight ! 
How  short  its  range !   .   .  .  How  much  like   a  flickering  torch 

•  Causeries  du  Lundi,  xi.  515,  Notes  aiid  Thoughts.        f  G.  Lanson. 
\  Poit-Eoyal.  §  Ibid.,  Conclusia)i. 

u 


210      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

lighted  for  an  instant  in  the  midst  of  boundless  night !  .  .  . 
How  powerless  one  feels  .  .  .  when  the  goal  is  reached  .  .  . 
when  we  discover  in  our  turn  that  we  are  but  a  most  fleeting 
illusion  within  the  infinite  Illusion  !  "  *  There  is  earnestness  in 
these  words  of  despair ;  there  is  a  longing  for  eternal  truth  ;  the 
Epicurean  scepticism  of  Montaigne  is  left  behind. 

Joy  and  confidence  were  slow  in  coming.  In  1863,  in  reply 
to  Guizot's  Meditations,  Sainte-Beuve  gave  us,  in  the  portrait  of 
a  pure  scientist,  philosopher,  or  critic,  partly  his  confession, 
partly  his  ideal.  Modest  and  patient,  the  critic  is  a  sceptic, 
that  is  to  say  not  one  who  doubts,  but  one  who  examines.  He 
will  never  know  what  he  most  ardently  wishes  to  know :  new 
discoveries  will  give  rise  to  new  questions ;  the  last  word  will 
ever  be  a  secret.  He  knows  that  destruction  is  a  perpetual  law 
and  condition  of  life,  of  its  growth  and  progress  ;  he  knows  that 
Nature  is  hard  and  pitiless  ;  that  most  men  are  at  the  mercy  of 
their  impressions,  and  are  changed  by  time,  circumstances,  and 
interests  ;  that  annihilation  and  oblivion  are  our  destiny  here 
below ;  that  all  promises  of  eternal  life  are  but  the  echo  of  our 
own  desires.  He  knows  his  limitations,  and  how  little  he  has  to 
offer  to  hungry  and  thirsty  men.  He  has  no  "  good  news,"  as 
men  understand  it,  to  bring  them ;  he  pursues  in  his  solitude 
high  but  imperfect  truths  which  have  no  price  but  in  and  for 
themselves,  and  for  the  use  of  very  few.  ..."  Such  a  scientist  is 
therefore  neither  threatening  nor  tempting ;  he  even  is,  if  you 
like,  a  living  proof  of  the  insufiiciency  and  of  the  moral  indigence 
of  science.  I  abandon  him,  incomplete  and  bare  as  he  is,  to  the 
believers,  happier  than  he."  Not  an  ignoble  ideal,  to  be  sure  ; 
but  hardly  a  cheerful  one. 

But  if  believers  may  be  happier  than  free-thinkers,  they  are 
not  better,  according  to  Sainte-Beuve.  Here  we  come  to  the 
exact  reverse  of  the  Hedonism  which  had  pervaded  his  philosophy 
for  so  many  years.  We  must  follow,  not  the  doctrine  which 
offers  comfort  and  hope — in  other  words  spintusil  pleasure — but 
the  one  which,  harsh  or  not,  seems  truest.  *'  We  are  no  longer 
free.  Whether  we  mourn  or  rejoice  over  it,  faith  is  gone  ;  science, 
whatever  may  be  said,  is  ruining  it ;  for  all  vigorous  and  sensible 

*  Port-Boyal,  Conclzision. 


CRITICS  AND  HISTORIANS  211 

mindSj  brought  up  on  history,  armed  with  criticism,  studying 
natural  science,  it  is  no  longer  possible  to  believe  in  the  old 
legends  and  the  old  Bibles.  In  this  crisis,  there  is  only  one 
thing  for  us  to  do,  if  we  will  not  languish  and  stagnate  into 
decay  :  to  pass  on  quickly,  to  march  firmly,  towards  an  order  of 
ideas  which  are  reasonable,  probable,  consistent,  which  give 
convictions  if  not  beliefs,  and  wliilst  leaving  full  liberty  and 
security  to  what  still  survives  of  the  old  creeds,  to  prepare  in  all 
the  young  and  robust  minds  a  basis  for  the  future.  Slowly  a  new 
morality  and  a  new  justice  are  being  evolved,  on  a  new  founda- 
tion, no  less  firm  than  in  the  past,  even  firmer,  for  the  puerile 
fears  of  childhood  will  have  no  place  therein.  We  are  men  and 
women  :  let  us,  as  soon  as  possible,  put  childish  things  away.  It 
will  be  difficult  for  many  women,  you  will  say — for  many  men 
too.  But  in  the  present  state  of  society,  the  salvation  and 
virility  of  the  nation  depend  exclusively  on  such  an  effort.  We 
shall  have  to  choose  between  Byzantinism  and  true  progress." 
And  we  must  also  quote  these  few  words  to  the  students  of  the 
Paris  Medical  School  :  "  I  have  held  for  a  long  time  that  the  sole 
guarantee  of  the  future,  of  a  future  of  progress,  vigour,  and 
honour  for  our  nation,  was  study,  and  especially  the  study  of 
natural  sciences,  of  physics,  chemistry,  and  physiology.  Thus 
many  vague  and  false  ideas  will  be  cleared  up  or  rectified  :  thus 
in  the  near  future  many  futile  or  dangerous  questions  will  gradu- 
ally, imperceptibly,  be  deprived  of  their  importance,  and,  who 
knows '?  be  finally  eliminated.  Not  only  the  physical  hygiene  of 
mankind  will  be  the  gainer,  but  its  moral  hygiene  as  well.  In 
this  respect,  much  remains  to  be  done.  Study,  work,  gentlemen, 
and  help  to  heal  some  day  our  sick  in  mind  and  body  "  (May, 
1868). 

These  words  may  fall  short  of  our  spiritual  ideal ;  but  there  is 
no  doubt  as  to  their  earnestness,  their  directness,  their  moral 
dignity.  There  is  in  them  a  quiet  reserve  of  strength  which 
implies  a  firmer  and  a  more  definite  faith  than  Sainte-Beuve 
openly  professed.  We  have  here  the  religion  of  science,  stripped 
of  all  romantic  exaggeration,  expressed  in  terms  of  quasi-scientific 
simplicity. 

This  progress  in  Sainte-Beuve  from  Epicurean  scepticism  to  . 


212      FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

scientific  stoicism  atoned  for  many  weaknesses  in  his  earlier 
life,  and  explained,  almost  justified,  the  words  of  reverent 
admiration  which,  when  the  critic  died,  Amiel,  a  keen  observer 
and  a  man  of  fine  spiritual  instincts,  wrote  in  his  journal : 
"  October  16,  1869  :  Labor  emus  seems  to  have  been  the  motto 
of  Sainte-Beuve,  as  it  was  that  of  Septimus  Severus.  He  died 
in  harness,  and  up  to  the  evening  before  his  last  day  he  still 
wrote,  overcoming  the  sufferings  of  the  body  with  the  energy  of 
the  mind.  To-day,  at  this  very  moment,  they  are  laying  him 
in  the  bosom  of  Mother  Earth.  He  refused  the  Sacraments  of 
the  Church ;  he  never  belonged  to  any  confession ;  he  was  one 
of  the  '  great  diocese,'  that  of  independent  seekers  of  truth, 
and  he  allowed  himself  no  final  moment  of  hypocrisy.  He 
would  have  nothing  to  do  with  any  one,  except  with  God  only — 
or,  rather,  the  mysterious  Isis  beyond  the  veil."  * 

2.  Taine. 

■^  Taine  is  the  best  representative  of  French  thought  under  the 
Second  Empire.  Victor  Hugo,  Michelet,  were  incomparably 
superior  to  him  in  poetic  power  :  but  they  were  survivors  of 
a  defeated  generation;  their  position,  although  honoured,  was 
isolated,  eccentric.  Auguste  Comte,  Eenouvier,  Vacherot  were 
more  original  and  more  consistent  thinkers  :  but  they  were 
not  in  touch  with  the  general  public.  Sainte-Beuve  and  Renan 
ranked  with  Taine  as  the  intellectual  leaders  of  the  age.  But 
Sainte-Beuve  laboured  for  many  years  under  the  unpopularity 
which  his  early  adhesion  to  the  Empire  had  brought  upon  him  : 
complex,  cautious,  even  timid,  he  did  not  openly  assume,  until 
the  last  few  years  of  his  life,  the  authority  and  responsibility  of 
a  leader.  Kenan,  with  his  ecclesiastical  grace,  his  elusive  irony, 
his  Celtic  dreaminess,  seemed  distant,  superior,  enigmatic. 
Taine,  rigid,  fearless,  brilliant,  assertive,  and  forceful,  was,  from 
his  student  years  at  the  Normal  School  to  his  death,  a  master. 

Taine's  career  is  remarkable  for  its  unity  of  spirit,  method, 
and  purpose.  Yet  the  events  of  1870-71  coloured  his 
imagination  and  influenced  his  judgment  to  such  a  point  that 
the  historian  of  The  Origins  of  Contemporary  France  seemed 

*  AmieVs  Journal,  translated  by  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward,  Macmillan,  1891. 


CKITICS  AND  HISTORIANS  213 

repeatedly  in  contradiction  with  the  author  of  Classical 
Philosophers  or  English  Literature*  We  have  to  deal  exclu- 
sively with  Taine  under  the  Second  Empire.  Then  he  was 
considered  as  a  thoroughgoing  exponent  of  Positivism  and  even 
materialism.  Scherer,  with  cold  and  still  uncertain  sympathy, 
Caro,  with  unctuous  hostility,!  Mgr.  Dupanloup,  with  open 
violence,  denounced  him  as  such.  He  himself,  without  doing 
homage  to  Comte  or  Littre,  accepted  the  name.  *'  Of  all 
three,"  he  wrote  in  his  private  notes  after  a  discussion  with 
Berthelot  and  Renan — '^  of  all  three,  I  am  the  most  radical 
Positivist."  I 

Taine  first  asserted  his  position  by  a  masterpiece  of  destruc- 
tive criticism,  French  Philosophers  of  the  Nineteenth  Century.^ 
Young  Positivism  challenged  official  Spiritualism  to  mortal 
combat.  Witty,  disrespectful,  cutting,  this  book  created 
scandal.  Taine  was  accused  of  seeking  revenge  for  private 
wrongs  by  attacking  a  whole  school  of  philosophy,  pouring 
ridicule,  not  only  on  the  living  head  of  that  school,  but  on  dead 
masters — Maine  de  Biran,  Royer-Collard,  Joufiroy — whom  he 
had  not  personally  known.  He  was  blamed  also  for  introducing 
the  brilliant  and  effective  methods  of  journalistic  polemics  into 
the  austere  and  serene  domain  of  abstract  thought.  The  younger 
generation  sided  with  Taine,  and  posterity  seems  to  have  ratified 
their  verdict.  The  eclecticists  or  spiritualists  whom  he  so 
efi'ectually  routed  were  not  entitled  to  the  immunities  and 
privileges  of  pure  philosophy.  They  had  become  as  a  school 
time-servers,  administrators,  orators,  rather  than  disinterested 
thinkers.  Taine  did  not  dislodge  Spiritualism  from  its  official 
stronghold :  he  granted  that  its  domination  would  last  for 
another  quarter  of  a  century,  and  it  outlived  that  term  by  a 
decade.     But,  in  spite  of  State   support,  eclectic  Spiritualism 

*  E.g.,  his  defence  of  the  Jacobins  against  Carlyle  {English  Literature,  v.), 
the  most  spirited  refutation  that  has  yet  been  offered  of  his  own  great  work 
on  the  Revolution.  The  change  was  so  complete  that  many  of  his  enemies 
in  the  Academy  in  1864,  when  they  refused  his  English  Literature  a  well- 
deserved  prize,  had  become  his  supporters  in  1878. 

t  In  Uldee  de  Dieu  et  ses  Inouveaux  Critiques.  I  Corr.,  ii.,  p.  244. 

§  First  published  as  a  series  of  articles,  later  remodelled,  softened,  and 
renamed  Classical  French  Philosopliers. 


214      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

was  no  longer  a  living  doctrine.  Taine  did  his  country  an 
excellent  service  by  proclaiming  the  fact  abroad.  Philistine 
common  sense,  vested  interests,  order,  prudence,  and  rhetoric 
were  idols  which  he  refused  to  worship. 

More  courteous,  but  no  less  unequivocal,  was  Taine's  con- 
demnation of  the  Romantic  or  sentimental  spirit  in  religious 
philosophy.  His  article  on  Reynaud's  Earth  and  Heaven  was 
his  first  contribution  to  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  (1855)  ; 
he  was  twenty-seven,  and  spoke  with  the  finality  of  a  supreme 
judge.  There  was  no  suspicion  of  selfishness  or  insincerity 
about  Jean  Reynaud :  but  at  the  back  of  his  poetical  and  harm- 
less transmigration  theories  there  lurked  the  old  fallacy  of 
Chateaubriand:  "I  desire  this  good,  therefore  I  shall  have 
it.  My  dream  is  pleasant,  therefore  it  is  true."  But  the  truth 
of  a  doctrine,  answered  Taine,  has  nothing  to  do  with  its 
beauty,  any  more  than  with  its  usefulness  ;  philosophy  is  neither 
an  instrument  of  government  nor  an  invention  of  poetry  :  ' '  Let 
us  therefore  separate  science  from  poetry  and  from  practical 
morality.  .  .  .  Science  must  not  accommodate  herself  to  our 
tastes,  but  our  tastes  to  her  dogmas  ;  she  is  a  queen,  not  a 
servant ;  and  if  she  be  not  a  queen,  then  she  is  the  vilest  of  all 
servants,  because  she  belies  her  nature  and  demeans  her  dignity. 
Let  her  not  think  of  governing  the  crowd ;  let  her  remain  in 
solitude  ;  let  her  pursue  truth  alone ;  dominion  will  come  to  her 
later,  or  it  will  never  come,  it  matters  not.  She  is  miles  above 
practical  and  active  life  ;  she  has  reached  her  goal,  and  has 
nothing  more  to  do  or  to  claim,  as  soon  as  she  has  found 
truth." 

This  defines  nobly  the  true  scientific  spirit  as  found  in  Darwin, 
Pasteur,  Littre,  Claude  Bernard,  Berthelot.  Philosophers, 
critics,  historians  had  hitherto  too  often  relied  on  their  imagina- 
tion and  their  personal  judgment.  Taine  set  up  a  new  standard 
as  exacting  as  that  of  the  chemist  and  the  physiologist.  And  so 
far  as  in  him  lay  he  lived  up  to  that  standard.  In  spite  of  his 
delicate  health  he  was  an  incessant  worker,  and  gave  a  splendid 
example  of  industry  and  conscientiousness.  After  conquering  a 
certain  kind  of  popularity  and  well-deserved  authority  he  never 
relaxed.     Li   his   books   he   marshalled  a  formidable    array  of 


CRITICS  AND  HISTORIANS  215 

minute  facts,  and  back  of  them  one  feels  the  presence  of  a  still 
more  formidable  army  held  in  reserve.  To  all  appearances, 
therefore,  Taine  made  good  his  claim  to  a  place  among  positive 
scientists.  He  served  truth  alone,  and  sought  truth  in  the 
observation  of  facts. 

But  the  elimination  of  all  practical  or  sentimental  considera- 
tions was  only  the  first  point  of  Taine's  scientific  creed.  The 
next  step  was  the  proclamation  of  the  absolute  unity  of  science, 
in  other  words  the  assumption  of  monistic  determinism.  This 
doctrine,  which  had  taken  a  strong  hold  of  Taine's  imagination 
even  while  he  was  still  in  college,  was  implied  in  his  Essay  on 
Livij,  and  was  expressed  with  remarkable  precision  in  the  short 
preface  which,  after  securing  an  academic  prize,  he  added  to  the 
work:  "  Man,  says  Spinoza,  is  not  in  Nature  like  an  empire 
within  an  empire,  but  like  a  part  in  a  whole ;  and  all  the  motions 
of  the  spiritual  automaton  which  is  our  being  are  as  well 
regulated  as  those  of  the  material  world  in  which  it  is 
included."  *  Later,  in  the  Introduction  to  his  History  of 
Enc/lish  Literature,  he  spoke,  if  not  more  strongly,  at  least 
more  crudely:  "Whether  facts  be  physical  or  moral  makes  no 
difierence  :  they  must  have  causes  ;  there  are  causes  for  ambition, 
energy,  truthfulness,  just  the  same  as  for  digestion,  muscular 
motion,  animal  warmth.  Vice  and  virtue  are  products,  like 
vitriol  and  sugar,  and  any  complex  notion  arises  from  the 
combination  of  simpler  notions  on  which  it  depends."  t 

So  far  Taine  seemed  to  be  a  materialist  pure  and  simple,  a 
lineal  descendant  of  the  eighteenth-century  philosophers,  a 
Lamettrie,  a  d'Holbach  with  a  wider  range  of  culture.  His 
admiration  for  Condillac,  the  theorist  of  that  school,  whose 
method  he  so  unreservedly  praised  in  his  Classical  Philosophers^ 
lent  colour  to  this  interpretation  ;  there  was  much  truth  in  it. 
After  the  collapse  of  iiomanticism  and  eclecticism  the  eighteenth 
century  did  revive,  not  in  Taine  alone,  but  in  many  of  his 
contemporaries,  and  these  among  the  gi*eatest.  It  was  the  time 
when  Sainte-Beuve  boasted  that  ''  the  eighteenth  century  in  all 
its  crudity "  was  the  true  foundation  of  his  beliefs ;  when 
Proudhon    said    to  Persigny  :    "  Volney,  sir,    is   my  master — 

*  Essay  on  Livy,  Preface,  185G.  f  Literature  Anglaise,  Preface,  xv. 


216  FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

Volney,  Dupuis,  Freret,  Diderot,  d'Alembert,  Voltaire,  the 
Physiocrats,  Condillac,  Moliere,  Bayle,  and  Rabelais  :  these 
are  my  Fathers,  such  is  my  tradition";*  when  Michelet 
wrote :  "  The  great  century,  I  mean  the  eighteenth.  .  .  ." 
Eighteenth-century  science,  narrow  as  it  was,  had  achieved 
notable  triumphs,  and  there  were  enduring  qualities  of  clear- 
ness, directness,  sincerity  in  eighteenth-century  thought. 
After  fifty  years  of  unjust  disparagement  all  tliis  great  effort 
was  at  last  appreciated. 

Such    was    the   fundamental    element    in    Taine.     We  have 
his    own    word    for    it ;    the    man    who    in    his   latter   years 
denounced  with  such  bitterness  the  classical  spirit,  as  revealed 
in  the    French    culture    of  the    eighteenth    century,    belonged 
essentially  to  the  school    he    fulminated    against.     "  My   turn 
of  mind  is  French  and  Latin  ;  to    classify  ideas   in  a    regular 
and  progressive  order  in  the  way  of  naturalists,  according   to 
the  rules  of  ideologists,  in    a    word    oratorically.''  \     He  was 
first    of   all    a    logician   and    an    orator.     It    was  the  flawless 
concatenation  of  propositions  and  consequences  in  Spinoza  that 
won  his  adhesion.     He  was  more  interested  in  ideas,  in  laws,  in 
causes,  than  in  positive  facts  or  in  poetic  fancies.     His  method, 
which  he  opposed  at  the  same  time  to  the  arbitrary  spiritualism 
of  Cousin,  to  the  agnosticism  of  Littre,  and  to  the  empiricism 
of  Stuart  Mill,  was  based  on  three  operations :  analysis,  abstrac- 
tion, generalisation  ;  it  was  the  method  of  geometry  and  pure  logic, 
the  simplest  form  of  Rationalism.    The  aim  of  such  a  method  is 
the  discovery  of  axioms,  from  which  all  secondary  truths  can 
be  inferred  deductively.     In  fact,  in  the  first  part  of  his  career 
geometrical  comparisons  are  very  frequent  in  Taine's  writings. 
He  borrowed  Hegel's  "  History  is  living  geometry,"  and  went  so 
far  as  to  say,  "A  man  is  an  axiom."     With  his  theory  of  the 
"ruling    faculty"    he   attempted   to    give    the   definition,    the 
formula,   of  a  man,  as  mathematicians  give  the  formula  of  a 
curve.      This  was  strikingly  exemplified   in   his   Livy   at   the 
beginning  of  his  career,  in  his  Napoleon  at  the  end.     Taine  was 
too  learned  and  too  clear-sighted,  of  course,  to  maintain  that 
the  results  of  psychology  and  history  have  the  same  unerring 
*  De  la  Justice,  vii.,  p.  146.  f  Notes  in  Corr.,  ii.,  p.  269. 


CRITICS   AND   HISTORIANS  217 

accuracy  as  those  of  mathematics.  In  a  letter  to  Ernest  Havet  * 
he  limited  and  toned  down  some  of  his  previous  affirmations. 
There  are  exact  and  inexact  sciences,  the  first  grouped  round 
mathematics,  the  second  round  history ;  both  deal  with 
quantities,  hut  in  the  first  case  these  quantities  are  measurable, 
in  the  second  they  are  not.  The  necessary  and  precise  relations 
which  exist  between  historical  factors,  although  not  measurable, 
are  entitled  to  the  name  of  laws,  like  the  similar  relations  which 
exist  in  natural  sciences.  But  the  very  words  inexact  sciences 
imply  an  aspiration  towards  the  complete,  the  perfect  type  of  the 
exact  sciences.  The  discovery  of  generative  formulae,  which  he 
identified  with  causes  and  endowed  with  a  sort  of  metaphysical 
existence,  remained  Taine's  ultimate  goal.  The  conception  of 
the  world  which  results  from  such  a  system  is  admirably 
described  in  the  last  page  of  Classical  Philosophers.  From 
abstraction  to  abstraction  we  rise  to  the  notion  of  a  few  supreme 
laws,  and  finally  of  one  from  which  all  the  others  are  deduced. 
Such  is  the  final  object  of  science.  "  Then  the  notion  of  Nature 
begins  to  dawn  upon  us.  Through  this  hierarchy  of  necessities 
the  world  forms  a  single  and  indivisible  being,  of  which  all 
beings  are  members.  At  the  summit  of  things,  on  the  ultimate 
height  of  luminous  and  inaccessible  Ether,  the  Eternal  Axiom  is 
uttered,  and  the  prolonged  repercussion  of  this  creative  formula 
engenders  by  its  inexhaustible  undulations  the  immensity  of  the 
universe.  Any  form,  any  change,  any  motion,  any  idea,  is  one 
of  its  acts.  It  exists  in  all  things,  and  is  limited  by  nothing. 
Matter  and  thought,  planet  and  man,  armies  of  suns,  an  insect's 
palpitation,  life  and  death,  grief  and  joy,  there  is  nothing  that 
does  not  express  it,  and  nothing  that  expresses  it  completely. 
.  .  .  When  its  serene  and  sublime  face  is  unveiled  there  is 
no  man's  mind  that  does  not  reel,  struck  with  admiration 
and  horror.  At  the  same  moment  that  mind  recovers  :  it 
forgets  its  mortal  destiny  and  its  insignificance ;  it  enjoys 
through  sympathy  this  Infinity  which  it  conceives,  and  partakes 
of  its  grandeur."  t 

Such  a  conception  is  absolutely  exclusive  of  a  personal  God, 
and  of  any  form  of  sentimental  religion.     On  this  point  Taine 

*  1864,  Corr.,  ii.,  p.  299.  t  PhilosojpJies  ClassiqueSt  p.  371. 


218     FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

did  not  vary.  In  politics  he  veered  in  after-life  to  extreme 
Conservatism,  and  thereby  won  the  admiration  and  sympathy  of 
the  Catholics.  As  a  historian  he  came  more  and  more  to 
realise  the  admirable  work  done  by  the  Church  in  saving  from 
the  wreck  of  the  ancient  world  some  fragments  at  least  of  human 
culture  ;  as  an  artist,  as  a  reader  of  Chateaubriand  and  Michelet, 
he  felt  the  deep  poetry  of  faith  and  worship  :  "  There  is  no  need 
for  us  to  give  up  poetry  or  to  break  with  the  past.  We  remain 
on  our  knees  before  the  sanctuaries  where  for  three  [sic]  thousand 
years  mankind  has  prayed  :  we  do  not  tear  a  single  rose  from 
the  wreaths  with  which  it  has  crowned  its  divine  Madonnas  ;  we 
do  not  put  out  a  single  one  of  the  lamps  with  which  it  has 
covered  the  steps  of  its  altars ;  we  admire  with  an  artist's 
pleasure  the  precious  shrines  in  which,  amidst  wrought  cande- 
labra, suns  of  diamonds  and  resplendent  copes,  it  has  lavished 
the  purest  treasures  of  its  genius  and  of  its  heart."  *  But 
beyond  these  hallowed  forms  he  sees  the  "impalpable  ideal," 
the  "profound  generating  powers,"  the  invisible,  unchangeable 
Laws,  by  which  all  living  forms  come  to  the  light  of  day.  His 
rigid  determinism  was  not  aJffected  by  his  historical  or  aesthetic 
sympathies.  On  the  central  question  of  religion,  that  of  a 
personal  Cod,  he  remained  at  the  antipodes  of  Christianity. 

Sometimes  his  hard  and  dry  Eationalism,  under  the  influence 
of  Goethe  and  of  Romanticism,  would  seem  to  expand,  to  soften, 
to  become  organic.  The  universe,  instead  of  a  system  of 
inflexible  laws  derived  from  "  the  eternal  axiom,"  would  appear 
to  him  as  a  life,  as  a  being  :  "  Wherever  there  is  life,  even 
brutal  and  maniacal,  there  is  beauty.  The  more  one  contem- 
plates nature  the  more  divine  it  appears,  divine  in  its  rocks  and 
in  its  plants.  .  .  ."  f  This  intuition  of  the  living  unity  of 
nature,  which  he  admired  so  much  in  Goethe,  did  not  perhaps 
exist  spontaneously  in  him  ;  but  he  understood  it,  reproduced  it, 
cultivated  it,  and  in  all  his  works  there  are  pages  of  enthusiastic, 
almost  religious,  description.  But,  admirable  as  they  are,  these 
passages  are  "  purple  patches,"  bits  of  naturalistic  pantheism 
tagged  on  to  the  drab  coat  of  eighteenth-century  Rationalism. 
Taine  starts  from  the  laws  of  the  material  world,  and  applies 
*  Litt.  Ang.,  iv.,  p.  353.  f  Ibid.,  iv.,  p.  354. 


CRITICS   AND   HISTORIANS  219 

them  to  the  intellectual  and  spiritual ;  whereas  Goethe's  point  of 
departure  was  the  concept  of  life,  which,  from  the  spiritual  world, 
would  extend  down  even  to  brute  matter.  Although  this 
organic  view  of  nature  has  been  identified  with  Germanic 
thought,  there  have  been  Frenchmen — Rabelais,  Diderot,  Victor 
Hugo — who  held  it  spontaneously,  and  gave  it  magnificent  ex- 
pression. Taine  was  not  one  of  them.  In  his  pantheistic  pas- 
sages he  impresses  us  as  a  virtuoso  or  as  an  inspired  translator. 

Taine's  rationalistic  and  monistic  philosophy  was  much  richer 
in  its  details  and  much  more  grandiose  in  its  ultimate  develop- 
ments than  the  commonplace  and  shallow  doctrines  which 
generally  go  by  the  name  of  Rationalism.  It  represents  the 
aristocracy  of  its  kind.  But  its  fundamental  identity  with  them 
cannot  be  denied.  Taine  wrote  to  Havet  in  1878 :  "  The 
legitimate  queen  of  the  world  and  of  the  future  is  not  what  in 
1789  they  called  reason;  it  is  what  in  1878  we  call  science.'' 
But  his  conception  of  science  was  two  generations  behind  that  of 
Pasteur,  for  instance  ;  it  remained  a  metaphysical-logical  system 
propped  up  by  innumerable  facts,  instead  of  a  disinterested 
collection  of  facts  leading  to  provable  results.  Although  Taine's 
erudition  blinded  most  of  his  contemporaries  and  himself,  he 
was  not  a  scientist,  but  a  logician.  If,  following  his  own  method, 
we  attempted  to  give  his  formula,  we  should  call  him  a  French 
rationalist  dragged  skyward  by  Hegel,  earthward  by  Stuart  Mill, 
and  making  the  best  of  the  situation. 

Magnificent,  but  cold  and  comfortless,  seemed  the  transcen- 
dental geometry  which  in  '' M.  Paul's"  system  took  the  place 
of  metaphysics  and  religion.  It  satisfied  certain  intellects,  but 
held  nothing  for  the  heart.  Spinozas  and  even  Vacherots  are 
infrequent  visitors  in  this  world,  and  there  is  something  almost 
inhuman  in  their  power  of  mental  abstraction.  Taine  was  their 
worthy  pupil :  it  was  said  of  him,  when  he  was  still  a  very  young 
man,  "  He  will  live  for  thinking,"  and  he  verified  the  prediction. 
Yet  he  remained  human,  all  too  human,  and  his  scientific  deter- 
minism was  perhaps  naught  but  a  mask,  or  at  least  a  discipline 
heroically  accepted. 

Taine  was  not  an  Olympian,  like  Goethe ;  his  mind  was 
sensitive  and  passionate.     His  view  of  the  world  was  not  calm, 


220      FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

orderly,  serene,  like  his  philosophy,  but  violent  and  sombre.  In 
his  chapter  on  Shakespeare  he  summed  up  the  psychological 
conceptions  underlying  the  French  and  the  English  dramas. 
To  the  reasonable  and  logical  psychology  of  Descartes,  Corneille, 
Racine  (!  ?),  he  opposed  Shakespeare's:  "Man  is  a  nervous 
machine,  governed  by  his  temperament,  subject  to  hallucinations, 
swayed  by  uncontrollable  passions,  essentially  unreasonable,  a 
compound  of  the  beast  and  the  poet ;  verve  is  his  wit,  sensibility 
his  virtue,  imagination  the  spring  of  his  actions  and  their  guide  ; 
through  the  most  determined  and  the  most  complex  circumstances 
he  is  driven  at  random  to  despair,  to  blindness,  and  to  death."  * 
This  psychology,  which  he  ascribed  to  Shakespeare  and  Esquirol, 
was  fundamentally  his.  After  the  terrible  events  of  1870-71 
his  imagination  was  further  darkened,  and  his  Origins  of  Con- 
temporary  France  are  a  gigantic  nightmare.  But  long  before, 
when  he  was  young  and  successful  in  an  orderly  and  prosperous 
nation,  he  was  already  a  pessimist.  The  misanthropy  of  his 
Life  and  Opinions  of  Thomas  Graindorge  is  as  savage  as  Swift's. 
Under  the  brilliant  forms  of  civilisation  he  saw  meanness  and 
brutality  everywhere.  Man  was  already  for  him  a  "  lascivious 
gorilla."  From  a  single  chapter  we  cull  the  following  notes: 
"  From  the  age  of  twenty  to  thirty  man,  with  great  difficulties, 
strangles  his  ideal ;  then  he  lives,  or  thinks  he  lives,  at  peace  ; 
but  it  is  the  peace  of  a  mother  who  has  murdered  her  first  child."  f 
"  In  order  to  get  an  idea  of  man  and  life  one  must  have  gone  to 
the  verge  of  suicide,  or  to  the  threshold  of  madness,  at  least 
once."  t  "To  have  an  alibi  [to  escape  from  the  horror  and 
tedium  of  life].  In  our  climates  one  has  work,  literature, 
society ;  in  addition,  among  the  lowest  classes,  alcohol,  which  is 
the  literature  of  the  poor.  In  the  East  they  have  opium  and 
dreams.  ...  In  Europe  we  have  science.  It  is  also  a  slow 
and  intelligent  suicide."  §  Graindorge  is  only  a  mask;  perhaps 
Taine  should  not  be  held  accountable  for  the  gruesome  humour 
of  that  extraordinary  meat-packer  and  Ph.D.     But  in  Taine's 

*  Litt.  Aug.,  ii.,  p.  245.  f  T.  G.,  p.  307.  J  Ibid.,  p.  308. 

§  This  conception  of  science  as  an  opiate  is  strictly  parallel  with,  Leconte 
de  Lisle's — and  before  him  Baudelaire's — conception  of  art.  Science  for 
science'  sake — art  for  art's  sake :  apparent  disinterestedness,  worst  form  of 
selfishness. 


CRITICS  AND  HISTORIANS  221 

most  thoughtful,  most  dispassionate  work,  Intelligence,  we  ifind 
at  the  bottom  the  same  spirit,  the  same  theory.  "  Madness  is 
not  a  distinct  and  separate  empire  :  our  daily  life  borders  on  it, 
and  we  all  belong  to  it  through  some  part  of  ourselves,"  said 
Graindorge.  "  Our  mental  life  consists  in  a  constant  struggle 
against  hallucination.  Sanity  is  an  unstable  state  of  equilibrium. 
A  perception  is  a  hallucination  that  happens  to  be  true,"  echoes, 
in  his  natural  voice,  Taine  the  psychologist. 

Whilst  most  rationalists  are  "  once-born  men,"  to  borrow 
William  James's  useful  terminology,  Taine  was  a  "  sick  soul." 
The  disease  improperly  called  "  le  mal  du  siecle,"  which  began 
with  Rousseau's  Sauit-Preux  and  Goethe's  Werther,  was  not 
cured  at  the  time  of  the  Second  Empire,  only  it  was  stoically 
concealed  :  "  Suffer  and  die  without  a  word."  Like  their  elders, 
Taine' s  contemporaries  were  sad  and  inclined  to  rebellion  ;  hap- 
piness seemed  impossible,  truth  inaccessible,  society  ill-con- 
structed, man  corrupt,  and  his  destiny  vitiated  through  some 
monstrous  disproportion  in  the  pieces  of  his  structure.  Many 
ways  out  of  this  terrible  situation  had  been  attempted  :  reckless 
enjoyment,  commonplace  prudence,  ambition,  a  blind  return  to 
the  old  beliefs :  all  had  failed.  Now  Goethe's  solution  was 
tried:  "Seek  to  know  thyself  and  to  understand  the  world." 
But  even  this  remedy  was  not  immediately  applicable.  "Our 
generation,  like  its  predecessors,  suffered  from  the  disease  of 
the  century,  and  will  never  fully  recover.  We  shall  perhaps 
attain  truth,  but  not  peace.  Our  intellect  is  all  we  can  hope 
to  cure  at  present :  over  our  sentiments  we  have  no  control. 
But  we  have  the  right  to  entertain  for  others  hopes  which  we 
have  given  up  for  ourselves,  and  to  prepare  for  our  descendants 
a  happiness  which  we  shall  never  enjoy.  Brought  up  in  a 
wholesomer  atmosphere,  perhaps  they  will  have  a  healthier 
soul."  '^' 

Perhaps :  and  this  hope  alone  ennobles  scientific  research, 
transforms  it  from  idle  curiosity  into  religious  service,  from 
an  opiate  into  a  remedy.  Meanwhile,  what  will  be  the  philo- 
sopher's attitude  in  the  moral  world  ?  One  doctrine  exists, 
so  sad,  so  strong,  so  serene  that  it  appeals  irresistibly  to  the 

*  Liu.  A)tg.,  iv.,  p.  388. 


222      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

pessimist  and  the  determinist :  that  is  Stoicism.  Marcus 
Aureliiis,  too,  saw  the  sad  spectacle  of  a  world  in  ruins — im- 
poverished and  corrupt,  worse  in  every  respect  than  ours.  And 
he,  as  Emperor,  felt  the  whole  crushing  burden  weighing  on  his 
shoulders.  '*  Like  a  pilot  without  hope  he  steered  his  ship, 
knowing  full  well  that  the  ship  would  sink."  *  One  idea 
enabled  him  to  remain  firm  at  his  post :  the  conception  of 
Nature  as  a  single  being,  of  which  we  are  all  members :  ''Be 
comforted,  ye  suffering  men :  on  all  sides  immensity  envelops 
you,  and  imparts  its  peace  unto  you ;  nature,  whether  it  exalts 
or  crushes  you,  makes  you  partake  of  its  strength  or  of  its 
repose."  "  We  have  learnt  much  in  sixteen  centuries,"  the 
critic  goes  on  to  say;  "but  we  have  discovered  no  ethical 
doctrine  which  equals  the  loftiness  and  the  truth  of  this  one. 
Our  positive  science  has  penetrated  more  carefully  into  the 
details  of  the  laws  which  govern  the  world :  but  except  for 
differences  of  expression,  it  leads  to  the  same  general  view."  f 

But  Taine's  Stoicism  never  was  "  active  and  tender,"  like 
de  Vigny's ;  it  remained  hard,  cold,  and  proud.  It  was  a 
doctrine  of  haughty  resignation,  not  of  love  and  hope.  Born 
of  determinism  and  despair,  it  could  lend  dignity  and  unity 
to  a  scholar's  life :  as  an  organic  faith  for  struggling  men  and 
women  it  was  powerless.  Taine's  influence  was  immense,  but 
hardly  in  the  spiritual  domain  ;  what  he  taught  most  efficiently 
was  materialism  during  the  first  half  of  his  career,  conservatism 
during  the  second. 

From  the  moral  point  of  view  Taine  was  a  saint.  Not  one 
of  the  amiable  type,  to  be  sure,  for  he  lacked  abandon  and  cheer- 
fulness ;  but  one  worthy  of  our  deepest  admiration  and  respect. 
His  long  literary  career  was  devoted  to  the  sole  service  of  truth, 
without  rest  and  without  fear.  As  a  scholar  he  had  a  wonder- 
fully broad  culture,  omnivorous  curiosity,  and  a  unique  capacity 
both  for  significant  detail  and  generalisation.  As  an  artist,  his 
was  not  the  gift  of  creating  life,  nor  the  power  of  mystic  sug- 
gestion :  he  was  great  as  a  painter,  although  one  is  conscious 

*  Nouveaux  Essais,  p.  98. 

t  Ibid.,  1856.     "Marcus  Aurelius  is  the  noblest  soul  that  ever  lived" 
(Ibid.,  p.  95). 


CRITICS  AND   HISTORIANS  223 

of  a  certain  strain  in  his  best  descriptive  passages ;  he  was 
supreme  as  an  analyst,  and  we  know  of  nothing  in  the  whole 
range  of  literature  to  match  his  passionate  logic,  so  masterly 
and  so  sincere,  at  the  same  time  so  well  controlled  and  so 
ardent. 

Yet  there  is  a  growing  sentiment  that  this  lover  and  servant 
of  truth  had  in  him  something  fundamentally  unsound,  and 
that  his  influence,  on  the  whole,  was  not  good.  Heterogeneous 
elements — French  rationalism,  German  metaphysics,  English 
conservatism  and  prudence,  romantic  pessimism  were  in  him, 
not  harmonised,  but  forcibly  brought  together.  He  whose  chief 
quality  seemed  to  be  clearness  remains  a  more  equivocal  thinker 
than  the  elusive  Sainte-Beuve  and  Renan.  An  appearance  of 
unanswerable  logic,  a  display  of  minute  facts,  an  imperious  style, 
and  above  all  the  ardour  of  evident  sincerity,  gave  outward  unity 
to  a  complex  and  contradictory  system.  His  example  strengthened 
that  which  is  more  dangerous  than  ignorance,  and  even  than 
frivolity — pseudo-science.  Clear,  honest  thinking  in  the  good 
old  French  way,  modest,  cautious,  painstaking  research  of  the 
modern  kind,  suffered  equally  from  the  success  of  this  pessimistic 
poet,  earnestly  masquerading  as  a  logician  and  a  scientist.  His 
intellect  was  a  powerful  and  delicate  instrument  which,  through 
some  original  vice,  was  untrue  :  perhaps  the  harsh  word  of  a 
political  opponent  was  none  too  harsh :  "  Taine  est  un  esprit 
faux."  Always  stimulating,  always  unreliable  and  dangerous, 
he  has  been  unduly  praised  as  an  intellectual  and  spiritual 
leader ;  whilst  his  fame  as  an  artist  is  firmly  established, 
and  will  probably  grow  brighter  Avhen  his  scientific  claims 
are  dismissed  and  forgotten. 


CHAPTER  IV 

ERNEST    RENAN 

•'  Au  fond  de  nous  est  comme  une  fontaine  de  fees,  une  fontaine  claire,  verte, 
et  profonde,  oil  se  reflete  I'infini." — Renan,  Saint  Paul,  p.  205. 

"  The  characteristic  feature  of  the  nineteenth  century  is  the 
substitution  of  the  historical  for  the  dogmatic  method  in  all 
studies  relating  to  the  human  mind.  .  .  .  History,  indeed,  is  the 
necessary  form  of  the  study  of  all  that  which  is  subject  to 
the  laws  of  changing  and  successive  life ;  .  .  .  the  science  of 
languages  is  the  history  of  languages  .  .  .  the  science  of  the 
human  mind  is,  in  the  same  way,  the  history  of  the  human  mind, 
and  not  merely  the  analysis  of  the  working  parts  of  the  individual 
soul.  .  .  .  The  great  progress  of  criticism  has  consisted  in  sub- 
stituting the  category  of  heco7ning  for  that  oi  being,  the  conception 
of  the  relative  for  that  of  the  absolute,  motion  for  immobility."  * 
These  words,  found  in  Kenan's  Preface  to  his  first  published 
work,  Averroes  et  VAverrdisme,  are  his  declaration  of  principles, 
his  manifesto  as  a  critic,  a  historian,  and  a  philosopher.  We 
may  not  fully  accept  Eenan's  method  ;  but  there  is  no  doubt 
that,  in  his  own  case,  it  provides  the  only  guiding  thread  to  the 
"  enchanted  maze,"  as  it  was  aptly  called,  of  his  religious 
thought.  The  only  way  of  analysing  Kenan's  complex  ideas 
is  to  trace  their  origin  and  their  development. 

1.  Influences,  1828-48, 

Renan  was  born  in  the  small  but  ancient  episcopal  city  of 
Treguier,  in  Brittany.  On  his  father's  side  his  ancestry  was 
of  pure  Breton  stock  ;  his  mother  was  half  Gascon.     He  always 

*  Averroes,  Preface,  vii. 

224 


ERNEST  RENAN  225 

considered  himself  as  a  Celt,  and  took  pride  in  his  race ;  *  but 
he  did  not  disown  the  Southern  element  in  his  blood :  the 
Gascon  within  him,  sceptical,  light-hearted,  Montaigne's  true 
compatriot,  would,  he  confesses,  play  "  monkey  tricks  "  on  the 
dreamy,  melancholy,  idealistic  Breton.  It  is  exceedingly  difficult 
to  appreciate  such  elusive  elements  as  racial  characteristics  and 
influences  :  Taine's  method  of  ascribing  everything  to  "  race, 
surroundings,  and  times  "  often  is  a  hindrance  rather  than 
a  help.  But  in  Kenan's  case  we  are  on  tolerably  safe  ground. 
Brittany  is  not  a  mere  province  of  France  :  geology,  history, 
ethnography  stamp  it  as  a  little  world  apart,  much  more  different 
from  the  rest  of  the  country  than  Normandy  is  from  Sussex 
or  Lorraine  from  the  Palatinate.  From  the  religious  point 
of  view,  especially,  the  originality  of  Brittany  cannot  be  doubted, 
nor  the  potency  of  her  action.  The  whole  history  of  religious 
thought  in  nineteenth-century  France  could  be  summed  up  in  the 
study  of  three  Bretons :  Chateaubriand,  the  herald  of  aesthetic 
Catholicism  :  Lamennais  in  his  triple  capacity  as  theocrat, 
liberal,  and  humanitarian  ;  Renan  himself,  who  combined  and 
rivalled  the  influences  of  Voltaire,  Chateaubriand,  and  Auguste 
Comte.t 

Renan  was  brought  up  in  the  Catholic  faith.  But  that  faith 
was  strongly  coloured  by  the  national  spirit  and  local  traditions. 
The  tremendous  progress  of  Ultramontanism  in  the  nineteenth 
century  has  almost  obliterated  all  these  provincial  differences,  so 
strong  before  the  Revolution,  and  to  the  remnants  of  which  a  few 
people  clung  tenaciously  even  as  late  as  under  the  Second 
Empire.]:  Breton  Catholicism  had  neither  the  austere  naked- 
ness of  Jansenism  nor  the  dignified  and  reasonable  moderation 
of  Gallicanism,  still  frequently  found  three-quarters  of  a  century 
ago  among  the  aristocracy  of  the  Bench  ;  it  had  little  in  common 
with  the  gaudy  materialism  of  Italian  superstition.  Rigidly 
orthodox,  and  deeply  spiritual  at  the  core,  it  was  covered  with  a 
thick,  fantastic  growth  of  legends  and  practices,  many  of  which, 
no    doubt,    were   of  pagan    and   Druidic    origin.     The    clergy 

*  Cf.  Souvenirs  and  Tlie  Poetry  of  the  Celtic  Races. 

t  Cf.  also  Hello,  the  great  Catholic  mystic,  so  different  from  the  orators  and 
polemists  of  the  Church.  |  Cf .  the  question  of  the  Lyonnese  Liturgy. 

15 


226      FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

had  to  tolerate,  while  trying  to  discourage,  these  traditions, 
Kenan's  mother,  her  Breton  piety  quaintly  shot  through  with 
Gascon  rationalism  and  humour,  would  tell  the  boy  the  miracles 
of  these  strange  local  saints.  It  is  not  indifferent  to  note  that 
the  religion  of  Kenan's  compatriots  was  not  so  much  a  system  of 
dogmas  or  a  code  of  ethics  as  a  rich  and  naive  mythology. 

The  whole  of  Kenan's  education,  up  to  his  twenty-third  year, 
was  in  the  charge  of  priests.  Not  only  did  they  inspire  him  with 
sentiments  of  affection  and  respect  which  nothing  could  efface, 
but  they  fashioned  his  soul  in  the  image  of  their  own.  Kenan 
remained  a  priest  all  his  life.  One  could  not  meet  him  without 
being  struck  by  his  sacerdotal  appearance.  Sleek  and  bland,  he 
was  better  entitled  than  Sainte-Beuve  to  the  dignity  of  bishop 
"  in  partibus  infidelium."  *  His  soul  remained  a  "  secularised 
cathedral "  ;  you  may  turn  it  into  a  stable  or  a  barn,  there  still 
lingers  an  all-pervading  fragrance  of  incense.  Like  his  early 
masters,  Kenan  devoted  all  his  life  to  the  service  of  the  ideal ; 
like  them,  he  showed  admirable  conscientiousness  in  the  accom- 
plishment of  his  daily  task.  Like  them,  too,  he  preserved  in  social 
relations,  and  under  the  form  of  the  most  exquisite  politeness,  a 
certain  aloofness  which  to  the  uninitiated  might  seem  the  evidence 
of  a  cold  and  selfish  heart.  He  relates  in  his  Souvenirs  how  his 
grandmother,  under  the  Consulate,  called  on  a  priest  whose  life 
she  had  saved  at  the  time  of  the  Kevolution.  Listead  of  the 
cordial  gratitude  she  expected,  she  received  nothing  but  coldness, 
and  went  away  in  tears.  Kenan  would  have  been  less  rude,  but 
as  little  moved  :  a  priest  is  not  a  man.  He  loved  his  sister 
Henriette  dearly,  but  in  his  Memoir  of  her  he  intimates  that  he 
often  treated  her  with  seeming  indifference.  His  friendship  with 
Berthelot  was  admirably  pure  and  lofty  :  but  there  was  no  touch 
of  familiarity,  no  abandon  in  it.  Henriette  and  Berthelot,  who 
had  not  reached  the  same  degree  of  sublime  aloofness,  com- 
plained repeatedly  of  his  apparent  lack  of  interest  in  them.  His 
critics — and  they  are  still  as  bitter  as  forty  years  ago — claim 
that   selfishness   was  the  keynote  of  his  life.f     To  be  rightly 

*  Cf.  Sainte-Beuve's  reference  to  his  "  diocese." 

t  Cf.  Gabriel  Seailles  :  E.  Benan,  Essai  de  biographie  psychologique,  Perrin, 
1895.  Excellent,  but  exceedingly  severe.  Also,  recently,  Parigot :  Benan, 
ou  VEgaisme  moral. 


ERNEST  RENAN  227 

understood,  his  attitude  should  be  compared  with  that  of  the 
Jansenists  ;  the  famous  scene  at  the  wicket  is  a  striking  instance 
of  inhumanity  dictated  by  religious  conscientiousness.  He  him- 
self justified  the  priest  who  almost  rebuked  Renan's  grandmother, 
his  benefactress,  by  quoting  the  words  of  Jesus,  whose  unwonted 
harshness  has  puzzled  so  many  souls  :  **  Woman,  what  have  I  to 
do  with  thee?" 

There  is  pride  in  such  self-sacrifice  :  all  stoics,  whether  Pagan 
or  Christian,  are  conscious  of  belonging  to  a  moral  aristocracy. 
The  feeling  that  the  service  of  G-od  conferred  the  truest  and 
highest  nobility  was  early  instilled  in  Renan's  mind,  and  re- 
mained unshaken  to  the  last.  This  poor  boy,  whose  father  was 
a  skipper,  and  whose  mother  kept  a  small  village  shop,  remains 
in  French  literature  as  the  most  complete  type  of  the  aristocrat. 
His  courtesy  was  that  of  a  prince;  "transcendent  disdain" 
lurked  behind  his  unassuming  and  kindly  exterior. 

In  one  other  respect  was  the  Catholic  stamp  indelibly  im- 
printed on  Renan's  mind  :  he,  the  freest  of  free-thinkers, 
retained  in  all  things  the  Roman  idea  of  authority.  Between 
his  youthful  dream  of  1848,  The  Future  of  Science,  and  his 
nightmare  of  1871,  the  last  of  the  PJdlosophical  Dialogues^  there 
is  one  common  point :  to  science,  the  new  religion,  should  by 
right  belong  absolute  dominion,  with  the  power  of  inflicting 
tortures  and  death.  After  a  few  years  of  passive  hostility,  he 
frankly  accepted  the  Empire  ;  when  Sedan  had  made  the  Bona- 
partes  impossible,  he  advocated  a  return  to  the  legitimate 
monarchy ;  and  whilst,  in  his  latter  years,  democracy  idolised 
him  blindly  in  spite  of  all  rebus's  like  Caliban,  he  still  professed 
his  inclination  for  an  "  enlightened  tyranny."  We  shall  see 
that  this  lingering  fondness  for  authority,  after  he  had  under- 
mined the  historical  foundation  of  authority,  left  his  moral  and 
religious  theories  in  a  singularly  delicate  position. 

Transferred  at  fifteen  and  a  half  from  the  small  college  of 
Tr6guier  to  the  Parisian  school  of  Saint  Nicolas  du  Chardonnet, 
under  the  direction  of  a  brilliant  young  Abbe,  the  future  Bishop 
of  Orleans,  Mgr.  Dupanloup,  Renan  saw  a  new  world  open 
before  him,  less  pure,  but  infinitely  more  varied,  than  that  of  his 
native  Brittany.     Joseph  de  Maistre,  Lamartine,  Michelet,  were 


228      FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

revealed  to  his  young  mind,  and  filled  it  with  dreams.  The 
mediaeval  history  of  Michelet  in  particular  took  hold  of  him,  and 
enraptured  him  to  such  a  point  that  he  was  unable  to  take  any 
note.  The  passages  on  Joan  of  Arc,  with  their  exquisite  tender- 
ness and  pathos,  their  blending  of  sound  historical  criticism 
with  loving  reverence  for  the  legend,  are  the  true  model  of 
Kenan's  Life  of  Jesus  and  the  earlier  masterpiece,  although  by 
far  the  less  important,  is  perhaps  the  more  perfect  of  the  two. 

From  Abbe  Dupanloup's  preparatory  school,  Renan  passed 
to  Issy,  a  subm-ban  branch  of  the  illustrious  Higher  Seminary 
of  Saint-Sulpice.  Thus,  after  a  glimpse  of  the  modern  world,  he 
was  again  steeped  into  the  past.  Saint-Sulpice  had  remained 
practically  unchanged  since  the  days  of  Olier.  The  Sulpicians 
had  retained,  in  1842,  the  same  reserved  and  dignified  piety, 
the  same  modest  industry,  the  same  other-worldliness  combined 
with  reasonableness  and  learning,  which,  two  centuries  before, 
had  made  their  seminary  almost  the  peer  of  Port-Royal.  The 
atmosphere  of  Issy  was  admirably  congenial  to  the  serious- 
minded  young  scholar;  the  ''  beautiful  mystic  park,"  as  he  calls 
it,  with  the  ancient  peace  of  its  formal  and  melancholy  walks, 
was  ever  dear  to  his  memory.  But  it  was  at  Issy  that  doubt 
began  to  assail  him.  Renan  repeated  so  often  that  science,  and 
science  alone,  had  ruined  his  faith,  that  most  critics  simply  take 
his  word  for  it.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  his  beliefs  were  greatly 
shaken  long  before  he  undertook  his  philological  and  historical 
studies.  His  letters  to  his  sister  Henriette  prove  this  point 
beyond  dispute.  It  was  philosophy,  not  erudition,  which  caused 
him  to  doubt.  Renan  was  a  rationalist  before,  as  well  as  after, 
he  became  a  scientist  ;  and  Rationalism  was  taught  him  by  the 
priests  themselves.  Although  M.  Olier  had  mystic  experiences, 
the  piety  of  Saint-Sulpice  bore  the  imprint  of  the  classical  age  ; 
it  was  strongly  tinged  with  Cartesianism.  The  influence  of 
Malebranche  on  Renan  should  not  be  overlooked.  "I  am  now 
reading,  with  extreme  enjoyment,  the  philosophical  works  of 
Malebranche,  undoubtedly  the  finest  thinker  and  the  most 
merciless  logician  that  ever  existed,"  he  wrote  in  January,  1848, 
and  nearly  thirty  years  later,  in  his  Philosophical  Dialogues^  it 
was  in  the  words  of  Malebranche,  **Dieu  n'agit  pas  par  des 


ERNEST  RENAN  229 

volontes  particulieres,"  that  he  expressed  the  essential  principle 
of  his  theodicy.*  Renan  was  a  free-thinker  before  he  became 
a  Hebrew  scholar.  "  There  is  another  kind  of  intellectual 
freedom,  wiser,  respecting  all  things  worthy  of  respect,  despising 
neither  persons  nor  beliefs,  inquiring  calmly  and  straightforwardly, 
using  the  reason  God  has  bestowed  because  it  was  given  for 
that  purpose,  never  accepting  nor  rejecting  any  opinion  on  merely 
human  authority.  This  is  a  freedom  permitted  to  all  men,  and 
why  not  to  a  priest?  "  f  Why  not  ?  "  Malebranche  certainly 
was  a  bold  thinker,  and  yet  he  was  a  priest,  nay,  more,  a 
member  of  a  religious  congregation."  I  It  should  be  remembered 
that  in  the  Catholic  Church  it  is  Rationalism — of  a  certain  kind, 
of  course — that  is  orthodox,  and  fideism — the  doctrine  that  faith 
is  based  on  faith  alone — a  heresy,  as  Lamennais,  Bautain,  and 
of  recent  years  Brunetiere  had  to  be  told.  Renan  tells  us  indeed  : 
"  My  faith  was  destroyed  by  historical  criticism,  not  by  scholastic 
logic  or  philosophy,"  and  to  all  appearances  his  orthodoxy  was 
intact  before  he  took  up  the  study  of  Semitic  languages.  But 
in  the  next  page  he  confesses  that  at  the  bottom  he  was  alread}^ 
no  longer  a  Christian.  One  of  the  directors,  as  the  masters 
were  called  at  Issy,  an  ascetic,  a  mystic,  a  saint,  M.  Gottofrey,  told 
him  *'  how  anti-Christian  it  was  to  trust  in  reason,  what  an 
insult  to  faith  was  implied  in  Rationalism,  and  he  added  in  a 
passionate  tone :  '  You  are  not  a  Christian  !  '  "  And  Renan 
proceeds  to  say  :  "  M.  Gottofrey  alone  saw  clearly  in  my  soul : 
he  was  right,  absolutely  right :  I  see  it  now."  The  delicate 
equilibrium  between  faith  and  reason  which  constitutes  normal 
Christianity  was  broken.  It  was  said  that,  in  the  Waterloo  of 
his  beliefs,  philology  was  Bliicher,  the  last  comer  who  decides 
the  issue,  but  Rationalism  was  Wellington,  the  first,  constant, 
and  principal  adversaiy,  the  legitimate  hero  of  the  field. 

His  years  of  study  at  Issy  and  Saint- Sulpice,  externally  so 
happy  and  so  calm,  busy  with  hard  but  congenial  work,  were 
overshadowed  by  the  sense  of  the  impending  crisis.      It  was 

*  Thi3  principle,  '*  II  n'y  a  pas  de  surnaturel  particulier  " — "  Thero  is  no 
piecemeal  supernaturalism  " — so  flatly  contradicted  by  William  Jame  ,  not 
only  lies  at  the  foundation  of  all  the  works  of  Renan,  but  is  formally 
expressed  in  most  of  them. 

t  BroOier  and  Sister,  112.  J  Ibid.,  98. 


230      FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

evident  from  the  first  that  he  would  not  sacrifice  his  freedom  of 
thought ;  and  as  he  advanced  in  his  studies,  he  realised  more 
and  more  that  the  results  of  independent  speculation  and  research 
were  incompatible  with  orthodoxy.  Three  considerations  held 
him  back :  the  instinctive  horror  of  a  pious  soul  ac  the  thought 
of  breaking  with  the  Church  and  the  religion  of  his  youth ;  his 
love  for  his  mother,  who  had  set  her  heart  on  seeing  him  a 
priest ;  and  his  evident  vocation  for  the  clerical  life,  his  unfit- 
ness for  any  other.  "Even  if  Christianity  were  but  a  dream, 
the  priesthood  would  always  be  a  type  of  the  Divine,"  he 
wrote  to  Henriette  as  early  as  September,  1842.  Henriette's 
influence,  on  the  other  hand,  was  wholly  on  the  side  of  spiritual 
enfranchisement. 

Malebranche  and  all  the  French  philosophers  together  would 
probably  never  have  rescued  our  religious  freethinker  from  his 
perplexity.  His  masters,  in  their  innocence,  placed  in  his  hand 
the  instrument  which  was  to  dispel  all  his  doubts — philology. 
He  began  his  Hebrew  studies  under  M.  La  Hire  at  Saint- Sulpice, 
and,  in  order  to  have  access  to  the  main  body  of  modern  scholar- 
ship, he  was  also  obliged  to  learn  German.  "  This  initiation," 
he  said,  "  marked  an  epoch  in  my  mental  being."  *  The  young 
Celt  seemed  to  discover  his  true  spiritual  Fatherland :  ''  I  felt  as 
if  I  had  entered  some  temple  when  first  I  gained  the  power  of 
realising  the  purity,  the  nobility,  the  morality  [of  German  litera- 
ture], and  its  religiousness,  if  I  may  take  that  word  and  use  it  in 
its  very  highest  sense.  .  .  .  Another  thing  which  delights  me 
about  these  Germans  is  their  happy  way  of  combining  poetry, 
learning,  and  philosophy.  Such  a  union  constitutes  the  ideal 
thinker,  to  my  mind."  Kenan,  who,  even  before  Gobineau,  was 
the  prophet  of  the  theory  of  races,  remained  at  least  until  1870 
a  convinced  "  Germanist  "  :  the  Teutonic  people  were  ennobled 
in  his  eyes  by  their  idealism  and  their  lack  of  practical  sense. 
When  his  beloved  Germany  of  poets,  metaphysicians,  and 
scholars  was  suddenly  transformed  into  a  powerful  nation, 
aggressive,  materialistic,  brutal,  Machiavelian  in  its  policy, 
cynical  in  its  dealings  with  the  weak  and  the  conquered,  Kenan's 
faith  received  a  deep  blow ;  much  of  the  bitter  humour  in  his 
*  To  Henriette,  September  22,  1845. 


ERNEST  RENAN  231 

dialogues  and  dramas,  some  of  the  flippant  Epicurism  in  his 
later  speeches  and  essays,  can  be  explained  by  the  disappointment 
this  transformation  caused  him. 

The  Germans  showed  him  the  possibility  of  a  freer  exegesis 
than  the  one  taught  at  Saint- Sulpice,  and  he  would  often  envy 
the  position  of  these  Protestants,  who  could  reconcile  their 
religious  spirit  with  the  critical  method.  But  he  did  not  enter- 
tain the  hope  of  a  similar  compromise  for  himself:  his  Catholic 
and  Cartesian  education  precluded  such  a  possibility.  One  can- 
not be  a  "philosopher"  and  a  Christian  at  the  same  time: 
**  The  Catholics  alone  are  consistent.  A  single  error  proves 
that  a  Church  is  not  infallible ;  a  single  weak  point  proves  that 
a  book  is  not  revealed.*  The  confession  of  a  single  error  ruins 
the  edifice  of  absolute  truth  and  brings  it  down  to  the  level  of 
human  authorities,  among  which  every  one  picks  his  choice 
according  to  his  personal  inclination." 

The  struggle  was  long  and  bitter.  When  Renan  left  the 
seminary  for  the  last  time,  on  the  6th  of  October,  1845,  it  was 
not  pride,  levity,  or  worldly  wisdom  that  had  won  the  day  for 
free-thought,  but  conscience  alone,  and  at  a  heavy  cost.  Renan 
and  his  masters  parted  with  mutual  feelings  of  affectionate 
respect.  His  subsequent  attitude  towards  the  Catholic  Church 
was  ever  deferential,  and  even  reverent.  In  this  he  was  guided 
first  of  all  by  his  own  feelings ;  but  he  was  no  doubt  influenced 
and  warned  by  the  example  of  Lamennais,  the  fallen  priest, 
whose  anti-clerical  violence  created  a  sentiment  of  repulsion,  even 
among  his  admirers. 

For  three  years  Renan  filled  a  subordinate  and  ill-paid  position 
in  the  Crouzet  Boarding  School,  where  he  met  Marcelin  Berthe- 
lot,  his  junior  by  four  years.  Both  were  idealists  of  the  purest 
type,  consecrated  men,  who,  in  early  life,  had  pledged  themselves 
to  the  service  of  truth  and  never  drew  back.  It  was  through 
Berthelot  that  Renan  became  so  much  interested  in  the  natural 
sciences,  which,  in  after-life,  he  regretted  not  to  have  exclusively 
cultivated,  instead  of  those  "poor  little  conjectural  sciences," 
history  and  philology. 

We  have  now  reached  1848,  the  initial  year  of  our  special 
•  Souvenirs,  Le  Siminaire  Saint- Sulpice. 


232     FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

period.  But  this  rapid  survey  of  Kenan's  early  training  was 
indispensable.  Henceforth  the  tree  is  full-grown  and  will  bear 
fruit.  A  Celt,  idealistic,  unpractical,  his  rich  imagination 
haunted  with  mythological  lore,  but  with  a  strain  of  Gascon 
humour  and  scepticism  in  him ;  a  Catholic  priest  by  training 
and  vocation,  lofty  in  purpose,  disinterested,  aristocratic  in  his 
tastes,  scrupulously  kind  and  polite,  but  with  a  tinge  of  cold 
aloofness ;  a  rationalist,  who  never  fully  shook  off  the  yoke  of 
Descartes  and  Malebranche,  in  spite  of  his  professed  allegiance 
to  the  ideals  of  experimental  science  ;  an  enthusiastic  disciple  of 
the  Germans  in  religion,  metaphysics,  poetry,  and  scholarship : 
such  was  the  young  man  who,  in  1848,  freed  from  all  bonds, 
began  his  wonderful  career. 

2.  Renan's  Life  and  Works  from  1848  to  1870. 

"The  year  1848,"  said  Kenan,  "made  a  deep  impression 
upon  me.  I  had  never  given  the  social  problems  a  thought 
before.  These  problems,  bursting  from  the  ground,  as  it  were, 
on  a  frightened  world,  took  hold  of  my  mind,  and  became  an 
integi'al  part  of  my  philosophy."  As  soon  as  his  studies  allowed 
him  a  short  respite  he  wanted  to  take  stock  of  his  beliefs.  He 
had  left  the  Church  for  science,  as  a  better  means  of  attaining 
truth  and  serving  the  ideal :  was  there  not  a  more  excellent  way, 
a  more  immediate  duty,  the  direct  relief  of  suffering  mankind  ? 
Was  not  science,  under  cover  of  its  disinterestedness,  "  an 
agreeable  pastime,  a  play  for  idle  folk,  an  ornament,  a  luxury, 
the  caprice  of  an  amateur,"  the  least  vain  of  all  vanities  t 
"Shame  upon  him  who  sings  whilst  Kome  is  ablaze!"  said 
Lamartine. 

The  book  which  resulted  from  these  anxious  questionings. 
The  Future  of  Science,  was  thus,  first  of  all,  a  scrutiny  into 
the  author's  conscience.  The  answer  was  unequivocal:  "Yes, 
science  is  worth  while."  The  inquiry  turned  into  an  apology,  or 
rather  a  confession  of  faith ;  and  it  was  also  an  immense  pro- 
gramme which,  with  naive  and  lofty  assurance,  the  young  scholar 
set  for  the  world  and  for  himself. 

The  work  was  too  compact,  too  austere,  too  revolutionary,  too 
trenchant   in    tone   for   immediate   success ;     Kenan's    guides, 


ERNEST  RENAN  233 

Sylvestre  de  Sacy  and  Augustin  Thierry,  advised  him  to  use 
the  bulky  manuscript  as  a  storehouse  for  lighter  articles,  and 
these  **  thoughts  of  1848  "  were  not  printed  in  their  entirety 
until  1890.  But  they  justify  the  epigraph  which  Renan  gave 
them  :  '*  Hoc  nunc  os  ex  ossibus  meis  et  caro  de  came  mea." 
All  Kenan's  philosophy  is  there  :  his  later  publications  are 
merely  his  first  essay  divided  up,  reworked,  lightened  though 
enriched,  softened  and  ripened.  In  1848  and  1849  Renan 
contributed  to  a  paper,  La  Liberie  de  Pcnser  {"  Freedom  of 
Thought ") ,  which  was  the  organ  of  philosophic  Radicalism.  There 
is  little  trace  of  dilettantism  in  these  articles — **  On  Clerical 
Liberalism,"  "  The  State  of  the  Public  Mind  in  1849."  We 
find  in  them  a  neglected  aspect  of  Renan's  talent,  a  polemical, 
dogmatic,  aggressive  tone  as  different  as  possible  from  what 
is  called  Renanism.  The  most  important  of  these  contribu- 
tions was  an  essay  on  '*  The  Critical  Historians  of  Jesus," 
a  retrospect  which  implied  a  promise. 

In  1849  Renan  was  sent  on  a  scientific  mission  to  Italy. 
This  eight  months'  tour  in  the  classic  country  of  art  had  a 
great  influence  on  his  young  and  receptive  mind.  Hitherto, 
as  theological  student  or  Semitic  scholar,  he  had  not  come 
in  contact  with  the  world  of  plastic  beauty.  Literature,  as 
literature,  this  great  master  of  style  despised.  Hence  the 
crudity,  the  harshness,  the  one-sidedness  of  certain  at  least 
of  his  early  opinions.  As  art,  ''  radiant  and  consoling,"  was 
revealed  to  him,  his  stiffness  unbent,  his  illusions  fell.  The 
sovereign  charm  of  Rome  operated  on  him.  He  was  then 
converted  to  the  cult  of  beauty.  Too  serious-minded  to  worship 
beauty  alone,  like  Theophile  Gautier,  too  honest  to  subordinate 
truth  to  beauty,  like  Chateaubriand,  he  came  to  consider 
aesthetic  charm  as  a  sort  of  secondary  revelation,  a  guide  in 
our  quest  for  truth.  In  his  latter  years  Renan  may  have  gone 
to  excess  in  this  direction  :  he  seemed  to  proclaim  the  equiva- 
lence uf  beauty,  goodness,  and  truth.  But  in  1849  the  influence 
of  art  on  him  was  refining  as  well  as  broadening.  We  may 
perhaps  regret  that  he  did  not  come  in  contact,  first  of  all, 
with  the  grand  and  pure  genius  of  ancient  Greece,  instead 
of    the  brilliant  and  often    insincere   facility   of  papal   Rome. 


234      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

Renan's  taste,  very  different  from  his  thought,  was  none  of 
the  manliest;  there  are  '*  sweet"  and  ''pretty"  passages  even 
in  his  strongest  works  which  invincibly  remind  us  of  Italian 
churches  in  the  Jesuit  style. 

Kenan's  optimism  received  a  crushing  blow  in  December, 
1851.  For  the  idealistic  democrats,  with  whom  he  had  identi- 
fied himself,  the  Coup  d'Etat  was  the  triumph  of  might  over 
right,  and  the  people,  in  whose  innate  goodness  they  still 
trusted,  remained  indifferent  or  applauded.  The  aristocratic 
feeling  which  the  priests  had  instilled  in  his  mind  revived  in 
all  its  strength.  Humanitarianism,  of  the  romantic-socialist 
type,  became  worse  than  an  illusion  in  his  eyes ;  and  the  last 
temptation  from  his  contemplative  life  to  one  of  immediate 
action  disappeared  with  the  advent  of  a  materialistic  and 
repressive  regime. 

For  the  next  few  years  Renan  kept  up  a  dual  intellectual 
life.  As  a  scholar,  an  investigator,  his  fame  was  firmly 
established,  and  won  him  a  seat  in  the  Academy  of  Inscriptions 
and  Belles-Lettres ;  at  the  same  time,  his  contributions  to  the 
Journal  des  Dehats  and  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  meant 
for  a  refined  but  extensive  circle  of ''general  readers,"  brought 
him  to  the  front  rank  of  modern  essayists.  Meanwhile  his 
silent  but  resolute  hostility  to  the  Empire  had  ceased  ;  and 
one  of  the  signs  of  the  liberal  era  inaugurated  in  1859-60 
was  Renan's  appointment  to  an  archaeological  mission  in 
Phoenicia.  This  mission  was  a  capital  event  in  his  life.  He 
lost  his  beloved  sister  Henriette,  his  wise  and  firm  adviser 
in  religion  and  in  literature.  He  visited  for  the  first  time 
Judea,  and  especially  Galilee,  which,  in  spite  of  the  havoc 
wrought  by  centuries  of  Moslem  misrule,  was  to  him  "  a  fifth 
gospel,  mutilated  but  still  legible."  "  Through  the  narratives 
of  Matthew  and  Mark,  instead  of  an  abstract  being,  who  might 
have  been  supposed  never  to  have  existed,  [he]  saw,  living 
and  moving,   a  human  figure  worthy  of  all  admiration." 

On  his  return,  Renan's  fondest  dream  was  realised  :  he  was 
made  Professor  of  Hebrew  at  the  College  de  France  (January, 
1862).  This  great  seminary,  with  its  freedom  from  pedagogical 
trammels  and  its  splendid  tradition,  the  most  original  and  the 


EENEST  RENAN  235 

best  centre  of  education  in  the  country,  had  always  been  his 
ideal.  But  the  heated  passions  of  the  time  did  not  allow 
him  to  appear  in  his  professorial  chair  more  than  once.  His 
opening  lecture,  of  a  general  nature,  as  usual  on  such  an 
occasion,  attracted  a  mixed  public  of  Catholic  and  Radical 
students.  The  quickly  silenced  marks  of  hostility  of  the  former, 
the  noisy  acclamations  of  the  rest,  frightened  a  Government 
averse  to  all  spontaneous  manifestations.  A  sentence,  which 
was  meant  to  be  guarded  and  conciliatory,  in  which  the  lecturer 
referred  to  Jesus  as  "  an  incomparable  man,"  roused  a  storm, 
not  so  much  in  the  room  as  later  in  the  Press ;  the  course  was 
suspended,  and  in   1864  arbitrarily  suppressed. 

But  the  turmoil  excited  by  Kenan's  single  lecture  sank  into 
insignificance  when  his  Life  of  Jesus  appeared  in  1863.     The 
publication  of  this  book  was  an  event  of  national  importance, 
and  the  bibliogi'aphy  of  all  the  articles,  pamphlets,  and  bulky 
treatises   which,   within   a   single   year,   appeared  in  criticism, 
refutation,   or  praise  of  this   epoch-making  work  fills  a  whole 
volume.     Strauss' s  Leheri   Jesu  had  certainly  created  a   great 
stir,  not  only  among  theologians,  but    in  the  general  public  ; 
de  Vigny's  Diary  proves  that  even   poets  read  it  and  felt  its 
influence,  and  the  fact  that  it  was  translated  by  such  writers 
as  Littre  in  France  and  George  Eliot  in  England  is  in  itself 
significant.    But  German  has  not  the  universal  and  proselytising 
qualities   of  French;    Germany   in    1835   was   not   so    sharply 
divided  as  France  in  1863  between  uncompromising  orthodoxy 
and  radical  free-thought,  engaged  in  a  life-and-death  struggle  ; 
finally,   with   all  its  merits,  the  book  of  Strauss  lacked  what, 
in  spite  of  all  its  weaknesses,  Renan's  possessed  so  abundantly 
— life  and  genius. 

The  tangible  success  of  the  work  was  immediate  and  unprece- 
dented. Within  five  months.  Sir  Mountstuart  Grant  Duflf 
reports,  sixty-six  thousand  copies  were  sold.  Merimee  told  his 
Incoiinue  that  Renan  had  made  over  four  thousand  pounds  by  his 
"  idyll."  Nor  was  that  success  merely  due  to  curiosity  and 
scandal.  The  complete  edition,  although  bulky  and  expensive, 
still  commands  a  ready  sale  ;  the  abridgment  published  in  1864 
with  the  title  Jesus  is  one  of  the  most  popular  books  in  the  Ian- 


236     FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

guage.  The  recent  and  excellent  reprints  issued  by  the  Scott 
Library  and  the  Rationalist  Press  Association  in  England  prove 
the  wonderful  hold  that,  after  forty  years,  the  "fifth  gospel" 
retains  on  many  minds. 

Certainly  friendly  "booming"  and  favourable  reviews  had 
little  to  do  with  this  triumph.  The  Life  of  Jesits  was,  on  the 
whole,  coldly  received  by  the  liberal  critics.  Havet's  article  in 
the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  alone  was  unreservedly  laudatory. 
Scherer's,  favourable  in  the  main,  was  cold  and  guarded,  and 
contained  many  serious  objections.  Sainte-Beuve's  was  typical 
of  that  elusive,  many-sided  mind :  it  contained  three  or  four 
opinions  and  no  conclusion.  Although  the  critic's  sympathy  and 
admiration  were  beyond  doubt,  it  seems  that  the  "  second 
friend,"  the  sceptic,  out  of  patience  with  Kenan's  ambiguities 
and  his  ecclesiastical  unction,  bears  the  closest  resemblance  to 
Sainte-Beuve  himself.  Merim^e,  a  man  of  great  intellectual 
power,  but  enervated  by  his  long  practice  of  paradox,  fastidious- 
ness, and  frivolity,  considered  the  book  as  a  sign  of  the  times,  but 
in  itself  a  trifle.  Proudhon's  verdict  was  absolutely  unfavour- 
able. George  Sand  felt  compelled  to  accept  the  historical 
results  arrived  at  by  Renan,  but  it  was  not  without  disappoint- 
ment and  sorrow :  she  had  lost  her  Christ,  a  humanitarian, 
anti-clerical  prophet  of  the  pure  '48  type.  Neither  scholars 
nor  sceptics,  sentimentalists  nor  free  -  believers  were  fully 
satisfied. 

As  for  the  orthodox  Catholics,  their  rage  was  beyond  measure. 
Henceforth  Renan  became  the  Antichrist  in  their  eyes.  Expiatory 
services  were  ordered  in  all  Christendom.  From  the  anonymous 
lady  who  sent  him  repeatedly  the  terse  message,  "  There  is  a 
Hell,"  to  Pope  Pius  IX.,  who  called  him  "the  European  blas- 
phemer," the  whole  Church  militant  was  arrayed  against  him. 
Hello,  who  had  devoted  his  main  philosophical  work  to  M.  Renan, 
Germany,  and  Atheism  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  abandoned  his 
mystic  realm  to  refute  the  historian.  Father  Grratry,  kind,  liberal, 
enlightened  though  he  was,  almost  rivalled  Yeuillot  in  the  energy 
of  his  anathema;  the  great  journalist  himself,  forgetting  that  a 
career  of  scurrilous  abuse  was  not  the  most  adequate  preparation 
for  theological  or  historical  studies,  wrote  his  Life  of  Jesus  as  a 


EKNEST  RENAN  237 

counterblast  to  Renan's.  Montalembert  saw  fit  to  denounce  the 
suspended  professor  as  ''  a  protege  of  Caesar's."  Even  the  dead 
were  pressed  into  service  :  some  of  Lacordaire's  lectures  were 
reprinted  in  1863  under  the  title  :  To  the  Readers  of  M.  Renan : 
the  Divinity/  of  Our  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  It  was  darkly  hinted 
that  M.  de  Rothschild  had  paid  him  a  million  for  this  attack  on 
Christianity.  \ 

Most  surprising  of  all  was  the  vigour  shown  by  the  smart-set 
papers,  la  petite  Presse,  on  behalf  of  orthodoxy.  Spicy  periodicals, 
filled  with  Parisian  scandal,  denounced  the  blameless  scholar  as 
"  undermining  the  foundations  of  public  morality."  Obscure 
"  chroniclers,"  as  they  were  then  called,  whose  French  was  not 
seldom  heretical,  accused  Renan  of  not  knowing  Hebrew.  This 
alliance  between  Gallic  levity  and  ecclesiastic  conservatism, 
which  Renan  had  scathed  in  advance  in  his  article  on  B6ranger's 
theology,  was  to  him  the  bitterest  trial  of  all.  He  thought  that 
all  men  who  served  the  ideal  and  led  pure  lives  should  stand 
together  against  the  "  practical  atheists,"  the  frivolous-minded 
and  the  materialists,  whatever  their  professed  creed  might  be. 
But  dogma,  not  virtue,  determined  the  line  of  cleavage. 
Renan 's  love  and  respect  for  his  old  mother  Church  was  put  to  a 
severe  test. 

The  significance  of  the  book,  for  good  or  evil,  was  due  to  its 
popular  character.  By  ''  popular  "  we  mean  neither  vulgar  nor 
superficial :  Renan  was  an  aristocrat  and  a  scholar.  His  erudi- 
tion has  been  challenged  :  no  historian,  no  scientist  is  infallible. 
His  beautiful  style  has  created  a  prejudice  against  him  among 
the  Dryasdusts  :  but  we  should  take  Mommsen's  word  for  it  :  he 
was  a  thorough  scholar,  in  spite  of  his  style.  His  election  to  the 
Academy  of  Inscriptions,  his  appointment  to  the  College  de 
France,  the  scientific  missions  entrusted  to  him — the  highest 
honours  that  France  could  bestow — show  in  what  esteem  he  was 
held  by  his  peers  in  the  domain  of  research.  On  the  basis  of 
scientific  investigation,  Renan  wrote  a  book  which  was  neither 
theology  nor  archaeology,  but  human  history,  a  book  which  could 
be  ''  understanded  of  the  people."  Therein  lay  the  revolution. 
An  abstruse  work  for  the  chosen  few  would  have  passed 
unnoticed  and  therefore  unchallenged :  a  fifth  gospel  as  acces- 


238      FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

sible  in  language  as  the  other  four  seemed  to  herald  a  new 
Reformation. 

There  are  four  principal  conceptions  according  to  which  a  Life 
of  Jesus  could  be  written.  The  first,  the  only  one  accepted  by  the 
orthodox  Churches,  is  a  mere  Harmony  of  the  Gospels  :  of  this 
type,  Bossuet's  remains  as  good  a  model  as  any ;  Veuillot's,  and, 
with  a  veneer  of  philosophy  and  scholarship,  Father  Didon's 
belong  to  the  same  class.  The  second  is  mainly  philosophical : 
the  idea  rather  than  the  personality  of  Christ  is  its  main  object. 
In  extreme  cases,  the  personality  would  be  entirely  lost  sight  of, 
and  the  Life  of  Christ  would  become  the  study  of  the  formation 
and  development  of  a  myth :  such  is  at  least  the  tendency  of 
Strauss's  Leben  Jesu.  A  third  type,  strictly  scientific,  would 
have  to  be,  first  of  all,  critical :  the  discussion  and  comparison  of 
all  existing  documents,  and  principally  of  the  Gospels,  would  be 
practically  the  whole  history.  At  the  time  of  Renan  and  in 
France,  this  work  was  done  piecemeal  by  the  Strasbourg  school 
of  liberal  Protestants.  The  first  method  takes  the  whole  ques- 
tion for  granted ;  in  practice,  it  leads  to  great  difficulties : 
flagrant  contradictions  cannot  be  reconciled  without  straining 
common  sense  and  good  faith  to  the  breaking  point.  The  second 
is  seductive,  but  dangerously  arbitrary.  The  third  is  purely 
destructive,  and  therefore  inadequate  to  the  treatment  of  the 
capital  event  in  the  world's  history. 

Renan  adopted  a  fourth  method,  which  he  borrowed  from 
Michelet,  the  "integral  resurrection  of  the  past."  When  all 
authorities  have  been  collected,  compared,  criticised,  a  few  facts 
stand  out  as  certain,  and  the  impression  of  a  general  trend 
remains ;  this,  of  course,  is  never  indisputable,  but  it  often  is 
highly  probable.  With  these  few  facts,  with  this  general  im- 
pression, with  sympathy,  insight,  and  a  feeling  for  the  laws  of 
life,  the  historian  composes  a  plausible  and  artistic  narrative. 
In  other  words,  he  off'ers  us  a  hypothesis  which  must  take  all 
known  facts  into  account,  and  at  the  same  time  conform  to  our 
notions  of  possibility. 

The  objections  to  such  a  method  are  obvious.  The  qualities 
of  insight,  imagination,  sympathy  are  not  to  be  despised  in 
a  historian  ;  when  they  are  kept  under  control,  when  facts  are 


ERNEST  RENAN  239 

numerous  and  well-established,  these  qualities  constitute  properly 
genius,  and  transmute  erudition  into  real  history.  They  are 
evident  in  the  best  and  soundest  works  of  Michelet  and 
Carlyle,  and  are  not  lacking  in  the  greatest  German  scholars, 
Niebuhr,  Ranke,  Burckhardt,  Mommsen.  There  is  not  a 
page  of  real  history,  as  distinguished  from  the  mechanical 
compilation  of  documents,  that  is  not  a  plausible  and  artistic 
hypothesis.  But,  when  facts  are  few  and  uncertain,  when 
there  is  no  universal  consensus  as  to  their  significance,  the 
personality  of  the  author  becomes  the  main  element  in  the 
book,  and  the  theory  defines  the  historical  romance  rather  than 
history. 

And  what  is  that  "  standard  of  possibility "  to  which  the 
narrative  is  made  to  conform  ?  We  shall  discuss  later,  with  the 
rest  of  Kenan's  philosophy,  his  assumption  that  miracles  are 
impossible  ;  in  this  particular  case  we  have  at  least  two  standards 
of  credibility,  that  of  the  orthodox  and  that  of  the  sceptic. 
Even  among  sceptics  there  are  differences  :  some,  like  Merimee 
and  Sainte-Beuve's  second  friend,  refused  to  admit  as  possible 
the  moral  miracle  of  Jesus' s  perfection  implied  in  Renan's 
history.  Renan  smiled  at  Quatremere  and  Buloz,  because  the 
one,  although  an  orthodox  Christian,  rejected  the  miracles 
**  difficult  to  perform,"  and  the  other  refused  an  article  on 
Buddhism,  for  the  reason  that  *'  there  could  not  be  such  silly 
people  as  your  Buddhists."  Yet  both  were  guided  by  their  own 
sense  of  possibility.  Renan's  criterion  is  either  individual 
fancy,  or  so-called  common  sense  :  and  neither  has  any  authority 
in  the  matter. 

Even  if  we  accepted  Renan's  theory,  his  book,  as  a  work  of 
art,  would  not  fully  satisfy  us.  Too  bold  in  his  rejection  of 
miracles,  or  too  timid  in  his  criticism  of  the  Gospels,  he  did  not 
take  a  decided  stand,  which  would  have  given  unity  to  the 
character  of  his  hero.  In  spite  of  all  his  "  gentle  solicitations," 
the  texts  which  he  had  accepted  as  authentic  and  historical 
agreed  in  their  report  of  at  least  some  miracles,  which  he  would 
not  admit.  This  led  him  to  Euhemerist  or  rationalist  explana- 
tions, such  as  tliose  he  had  derided  in  Paulus  ;  and,  worse  still, 
he  had  to  fall  back,  in  the  case  of  Lazarus  at  least,   on  the 


240      FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

Voltairian  hypothesis  of  fraud.*  This  assumption  is  absolutely 
in  contradiction  with  his  own  loving  and  reverent  conception 
of  Jesus.  Furthermore,  his  *'  young  Galilean  peasant,"  without 
being  in  any  way  vulgar,  must  have  been  ignorant  and  narrow- 
minded  :  all  his  greatness  was  spiritual  and  moral,  not 
intellectual.  Yet  Renan  ascribes  to  him  his  own  attitude  of 
half-contemptuous  superiority,  his  transcendental  scepticism 
which  smiles  at  all  things,  not  excluding  itself,  his  many-sided 
and  subtle  turn  of  mind  which,  whilst  enabling  him  to  under- 
stand all  things,  would  not  permit  him  to  judge  or  affirm 
anything.  As  we  cannot  even  think  except  in  terms  of  our  own 
experience — actual  or  virtual — all  biographers  are  liable  to  draw 
their  heroes  after  their  own  likeness.  But  in  this  case  there  is 
>  absolute  incompatibility  between  the  two  types  of  mind,  between 
the  firm,  earnest,  direct  Teacher  who  spoke  "  as  one  having 
authority,"  and  the  cautious,  fastidious,  over-cultured  critic  in 
whose  eyes  dogmatism  was  the  one  unpardonable  sin.  Every 
attempt  at  Renanising  Jesus  seems  a  sacrilege  to  the  believer, 
an  impossibility  to  the  historian,  and  an  error  of  taste  to 
the  artist,  t 

Even  more  striking  is  the  contradiction  between  the  beginning 
and  the  end  of  Jesus's  career  in  Renan's  book.  A  historical 
character  is  supposed  to  develop  according  to  the  laws  of  life. 
Jesus  was  no  exception,  and  the  most  orthodox  apologists  at 
present  speak  freely  of  His  growth,  an  evolutionary  view  for 
which  there  is  Gospel  authority.!  But  Renan,  although  such 
a  great  master  of  fine  shading,  shows  us  a  glaring  contrast 
instead  of  a  gradual  change.  He  describes,  with  a  charm  not 
wholly  free  from  sentimentality,  §  the  *' joyous  idyll"  of  Galilee, 
a  happy  band  of  children  by  the  shore  of  enchanted  lakes. 
Then,  with  the  scantiest  transition,  we  are  shown  a  totally 
different   Jesus,    harsh,    fanatical,    revolutionary,    a    "  sombre 

*  He  abandoned  this  hypothesis  in  the  thirteenth  edition,  and  accepted 
Strauss's  symbolical  interpretation  of  the  miracle. 

t  Cf.  also  Antichrist,  p.  102.  Friedrich  Paulsen  has  treated  of  the  "  irony 
of  Jesus,"  but  that  does  not  include  scepticism  and  self-criticism. 

+  Luke  ii.  40. 

§  E.g.,  the  inordinate  use  of  the  words  "sweet,"  "charming," 
♦'  delicious." 


ERNEST  RENAN  241 

giant."  In  this,  and  by  his  own  tests  of  harmonj^  and 
possibility,  Renan  has  manifestly  failed. 

The  Life  of  Jesus  is  therefore  far  from  being  a  perfect  book: 
it  is  not  even  Renan's  masterpiece.  As  a  work  of  art,  the 
Antichrist  has  more  power,  more  variety,  more  dramatic  interest ; 
whilst  in  point  of  poetical  charm,  refined  humour,  and  kindly 
philosophy,  the  Souvenirs  stand  supreme.  Like  Zola's  Down- 
fall, for  instance,  the  book  owed  its  success  to  its  subject,  rather 
than  to  the  perfection  of  its  treatment.  Yet,  faulty  as  it  is,  it 
remains,  not  only  one  of  the  epoch-making  works  in  French 
literature,  but  one  of  the  greatest.  There  is  a  blessing  for  him 
who  dares  to  wrestle  with  the  angel  of  the  Lord.  Renan's 
portrait  of  Christ  is  full  of  contradictions :  yet  to  thousands  of 
readers  it  seemed  less  impossible  than  the  conception  of  the 
orthodox.  The  Empress  Eugenie,  liberal  for  once,  is  reported  to 
have  said :  "It  will  do  no  harm  to  believers :  it  will  do  good  to 
unbelievers."  A  cause  of  scandal  for  many,  the  Life  of  Jesus 
was  for  many  more  a  source  of  edification.  An  intense  love  for 
truth  and  goodness,  for  the  ideal  as  embodied  in  Christ  Jesus, 
pervades  these  imperfect  and  incomplete  pages.  No  man  has 
ever  been  the  worse  for  reading  Renan's  Life  of  Jesus, 

The  attitude  of  the  author,  so  bitterly  assailed  on  every  side, 
was  full  of  serene  dignity.  He  replied  to  none,  and  pursued 
his  work  with  the  same  calm  as  if  his  volume  had  passed 
unnoticed.  He  could  never  be  drawn  to  speak  an  unkind  word 
against  the  Church  which  was  so  unscrupulously  reviling  him. 

In  August,  1863,  whilst  the  controversy  was  at  its  height, 
Renan,  who  was  seeking  rest  at  Dinard,  on  the  coast  of  Brittany, 
wrote  a  summary  of  his  philosophy,  in  the  form  of  a  letter 
to  his  friend  Berthelot.  This  essential  document  was  published 
in  the  Revue  cles  Deux  Mondes  under  the  title  *'  The  Sciences 
of  Nature  and  the  Historical  Sciences,"  and  is  now  reprinted 
with  Berthelot's  reply  in  the  Philosophical  Fragments.  George 
Sand,  whose  admiration  for  the  Life  of  Jesus  was  somewhat 
qualified,  was  enthusiastic  about  the  shorter  work.  No  trace 
of  the  storm  raging  round  him  can  be  found  in  these  serene 
pages. 

In   1866  Renan  gave  the  second  volume  of  his  Origins  of 

16 


242     FKENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

Christianity — The  Apostles.  This  work,  valuable  in  itself, 
was  bound  to  seem  colourless  and  tame  in  comparison  with 
the  first.  In  1869  appeared  Saint  Paul,  full  of  admirable 
passages,  and  yet  the  most  unsatisfactory  volume  of  the  whole 
series.  Kenan  was  absolutely  out  of  sympathy  with  his  subject. 
The  second  founder  of  Christianity  is  rightly  considered  as 
the  great  doctor  of  Protestantism,  and  Renan  was  a  Catholic 
to  the  core.  The  last  pages  of  the  work  are  an  arraignment 
of  St.  Paul  as  violent  as  anything  Renan  ever  wrote.* 

In  the  dedication  of  Saint  Paul  to  Cornelie  Scheffer  (his 
wife),  Renan  said:  "  Some  enormous  errors  are  dragging 
our  country  to  the  abyss :  those  to  whom  they  are  pointed 
out  reply  with  a  smile."  The  quiet  scholar,  who  had  so  con- 
sistently kept  aloof  from  active  politics,  did  not  remain  in- 
different or  idle  when  he  thought  his  collaboration  was  needed. 
In  1868  he  published  his  Questions  of  the  Times.  The  whole 
book  may  be  recommended  to  those  who  know  Renan  only 
as  a  dilettante.  The  tone  of  every  article  is  direct,  earnest, 
and  in  the  case  of  the  early  essays  therein  reprinted,  almost 
aggressive.  Beranger's  Theology,  in  particular,  is  noteworthy 
as  a  scathing  indictment  of  Philistinism  and  levity  combined. 
The  Preface  contains  a  fine  tribute  to  the  personal  policy  of 
the  Emperor,  so  much  superior  to  the  one  which,  under  the 
joint  pressure  of  his  Government  and  of  the  Opposition,  un- 
fortunately prevailed.  Renan  went  farther,  and  offered  himself 
as  a  candidate  for  the  Legislative  Body.  Opposed  both  by 
the  Imperialists  and  the  Republicans,  he  was  honourably 
defeated.  He  was  exactly  the  reverse  of  a  politician :  history 
has  vindicated  so  many  of  his  views  that  he  may  be  credited 
with  some  at  least  of  the  qualities  of  a  statesman. 

He  was  on  a  tour  in  Norway  with  Prince  Napoleon,  when  the 
long  foreseen  catastrophe  occurred.  France  had  declared  war 
on  Prussia.  With  the  fall  of  the  Empire,  the  second  period 
of  Renan's  life  closed.  After  1870,  Renan,  although  not 
essentially  altered,  appeared   in   a   different   light.     His   later 

*  Cf.  the  amusing  passage  in  The  Antichrist,  p.  200,  in  which  he 
expresses  the  pious  wish  that  St.  Paul,  before  his  death,  may  have  found 
the  error  of  his  ways. 


ERNEST  RENAN  243 

writings  not  seldom  seemed  to  contradict  his  first.  The  trend 
of  his  elusive  thought  had  been  a  problem :  it  became  a  puzzle. 
We  shall  now  attempt,  from  the  production  of  these  twenty-two 
years  (1848-70),  to  trace  the  outlines  of  his  religious  philosophy. 

3.  Renaris   Religious   Philosophy — 1848-70. 

The  service  of  the  ideal  was  the  foundation  of  Renan's  life. 
From  the  first  and  to  the  last,  he  affirmed  his  faith  in  "  the 
Divine."  In  1845  he  wrote  to  Henriette :  "Absolute  truth 
and  goodness  do  exist.  We  must  believe  the  first  and  practise 
the  second.  The  thought  of  any  difi'erent  world  would  be  a  night- 
mare "  (September  22,  1845).  His  Future  of  Science  (1848-49) 
opens  with  the  quotation:  *' But  one  thing  is  needful,"  and 
this,  we  are  told  in  the  first  pages,  is  "to  live  the  life  of 
the  spirit  ...  all  the  rest  is  vanity."  "  God  is,"  he  affirms 
again  in  his  article  on  Feuerbach  ;  "all  the  rest  only  seems  to 
be."  *  And,  in  the  Dedication  of  his  Saint  Paul :  "  Descartes 
was  right  not  to  believe  in  the  reality  of  the  world  until  he 
had  proved  to  himself  the  existence  of  God ;  Kant  was  right 
in  doubting  everything  until  he  had  discovered  duty."  Serious- 
ness was  in  his  eyes  the  prime  and  necessary  virtue  of  a  scholar, 
a  philosopher,  a  man.  He  wanted  to  side  with  the  Churches 
against  their  common  enemy :  frivolity,  vulgarity.  Mammon- 
worship,  t  Levity,  even  under  a  mask  of  orthodoxy,  seemed 
to  him  the  worst  kind  of  atheism  ;  earnestness,  even  in  the 
form  of  passionate  negation,  he  considered  as  a  tribute  to 
the  ideal.  The  shallow  Voltairian  "theology"  of  Beranger, 
the  God]of  good  fellows,  the  cheap  religiosity  of  grisettes,  topers, 
and  Philistines,  made  him  indignant  as  downright  blasphemy. 
Not  the  slightest  suspicion  of  insincerity  attaches  to  these 
declarations.  They  were  not  called  for  in  virtue  of  Renan's 
official  position  or  party  allegiance,  for  no  man  was  more 
independent  of  such  ties  than  he.  They  were  neither  brilliant 
paradoxes  nor  popular  platitudes :  the  tone  of  the  age  was 
either  flippant  and  cynical,  or  bitterly  pessimistic,  or  cold  and 
stoic.     To   affirm  such  plain   spiritual  truths,  with    such  quiet 

*  Etudes  d'Histoire  Rcltgieuse,  418. 
f  The  Apostles,  Introduction,  Ixiii. 


244     FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

force  and  without  a  smile,  for  a  man  of  fastidious  taste  who 
despised  Beotians  and  hated  charlatans,  required  no  small 
degree  of  conviction  and  courage.  Finally,  he  acted  the  law 
he  lived  by,  without  fear.  His  practical  life  was  obviously 
shaped  by  his  beliefs.  No  doubt  as  to  his  absolute  devotion 
to  the  ideal  is  permissible. 

We  must  insist  on  this  all-important  question,  because  it  has 
been  obscured  by  Renan  himself.  Renan  was  affected  later 
with  what  he  had  called  "the  pedantry  of  levity,"  that 
peculiarly  French  disease  also  defined  as  "  the  hypocrisy  of 
cynicism."  He  seemed  to  preach  the  *'old  bachelor's  philo- 
sophy "  of  Ecclesiastes, — Eat,  drink,  and  be  merry,  for  all  is 
vanity,  dropping  the  saving  clause  :  except  to  fear  God  and  keep 
His  commandments.  He  would  openly  wonder  whether  the 
frivolous-minded  were  not  right  after  all.  He  would  proclaim 
beauty — not  the  conscious,  spiritualised  beauty  of  art,  but  the 
material  perfection  of  a  human  body — as  true  a  revelation  of 
the  ideal  as  goodness  or  wisdom.  He  rebuked  the  efforts  of 
temperance  societies,  which,  he  said,  would  rob  the  people  of 
their  little  portion  of  happiness  and  dreams.  He  went  so  far  as 
to  apologise  to  that  vulgar  idol,  the  god  of  Beranger  and  his 
Lisette,  "  a  good  little  god,"  he  said,  "  kindly  and  easygoing." 
There  is  something  exquisitely  painful  in  the  spectacle  of  this 
white-haired  priest,  once  the  not  unworthy  biographer  of  Jesus, 
stooping  to  the  level  of  vulgar  Epicureans. 

Although  this  development  took  place  after  the  date  we  have 
set  as  the  limit  of  this  study,  we  cannot  wholly  ignore  it. 
Unless  it  can  be  proved  that  a  new  Renan  was  born  after  1870, 
entirely  different  from  the  old,  our  trust  in  his  earlier  profession 
of  idealism  must  be  greatly  shaken,  or  at  least  has  to  be 
qualified.  In  fact,  the  events  of  1870-71  did  affect  him 
deeply,  and  he  was,  like  Taine,  thrown  off  his  balance  by  the 
accumulated  disasters  of  the  "terrible  year."  Defeat,  invasion, 
dismemberment ;  a  political  revolution,  an  anarchistic  uprising, 
both  under  the  eyes  of  the  enemies ;  the  very  notion  of  national 
existence  obscured  ;  Might  proclaimed  Right  by  Renan's  masters 
in  idealism :  these  repeated  blows  are  sufiicient  to  explain  a 
decided   change   in  his  turn  of  mind.     The  pessimism  of  his 


ERNEST  RENAN  245 

Dialogues  and  first  Dramas  was  to  a  certain  extent  a  disease,  the 
result  of  a  nervous  and  moral  shock ;  the  good-humoured 
cynicism,  the  sceptical  flippancy  of  his  later  writings  *  were 
steps  towards  recovery,  a  gradual  return  to  optimism,  but  still 
slow,  weary,  half-despairing,  in  spite  of  all  smiles.  The  publi- 
cation of  the  Future  of  Science  at  the  end  of  his  career  showed 
that  Kenan's  mind,  unlike  Taine's,  had  righted  itself,  and  that 
the  cure  was  complete.! 

But  the  influence  of  contemporary  events,  great  as  it  was, 
should  not  be  accepted  as  a  full  explanation  of  Kenan's  spiritual 
duality.  The  germ  of  what  we  persist  in  calling  the  disease 
of  Konanism  existed  even  in  the  young  seminarist  of  Saint- 
Sulpice.  There  already  was  a  Gascon  within  him,  as  he  put 
it,  struggling  against  the  pensive  Breton :  only  for  many  years 
the  Gascon  was  efl'ectually  curbed.  Did  the  resistance  of  the 
Celt  weaken  ?  Or  should  we  not  rather  believe  that,  secure  in  his 
victory,  the  Celt  would  with  smiling  indulgence  allow  the  Gascon 
occasionally  to  play  a  few  harmless  "monkey  tricks"?! 

The  Gascon,  as,  with  due  apologies  to  a  great  province,  we 
shall  now  call  Kenan's  Mr.  Hyde,  may  have  loomed  large  in  the 
eyes  of  journalists  and  society  people  :  but  perhaps  the  adepts 
of  Kenanism  in  the  wi'ong  sense  are  too  apt  to  forget  that  their 
master ,  remained  to  his  dying  day  a  most  diligent  and  most 
careful  scholar  ;  of  all  his  works  he  prized  his  Corpus  of  Semitic 
Inscriptions  highest,  even  before  his  histories  of  Christianity 
and  of  the  Jewish  people.  A  few  by-products  of  a  fertile  pen, 
dashed  off  in  the  intervals  between  serious  labour,  should  not 
outweigh  twenty  volumes  of  patient  research  and  a  whole  life- 
time devoted  to  the  service  of  scientific  truth. 

That  the  dilettante,  the  aesthete,  the  sentimentalist,  repre- 
sented only  Kenan's  lesser  and  lower  self  is  our  firm  conviction, 
after  an  unbiased  perusal  of  his  complete  works.  We  are 
inclined  to  go  farther  and  to  venture  the  hypothesis  that  the 

•  The  last  dramas,  parts  of  the  Souvenirs,  several  of  the  addresses. 

t  The  change  is  very  striking  in  The  Antichrist,  the  first  volume  of  the 
Origins  published  after  the  war  and  the  Commune.     Cf.  pp.  102,  141,  200. 

\  "  Un  Gascon,  sans  que  je  le  susse,  jouait  en  moi  des  tours,  incroyables  au 
Breton  et  lui  faisait  des  mines  de  singe  "  {^Souvenirs,  Saint  Nicholas  du 
Chardonnet). 


246      FKENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

"  Gascon  "  had  no  real  existence  at  all ;  that  he  was  merely  a 
child  of  Kenan's  indulgence  and  fancy,  an  imaginary  being,  not 
a  part  of  his  real  self. 

Whilst  Eenan  was  a  stanch  believer  in  absolute  goodness 
and  truth,  he  was  thoroughly  sceptical  as  to  the  ever-changing 
symbols  which  are  proposed  for  the  ideal.  "  Everything  here 
below  is  but  a  symbol  and  a  dream,"  he  said  in  Saint  Paul* 
*'  Every  religious  form  is  imperfect,  and  yet  religion  cannot  exist 
without  form.  The  wise  man  is  he  who  sees  at  the  same  time 
,  that  everything  is  an  image,  a  prejudice,  a  symbol,  and  that 
i  images,  prejudices,  and  symbols  are  necessary,  useful,  and  true."  f 
Dogmatic  affirmation,  dogmatic  negation,  are  equally  one-sided. 
Eenan  is  the  reverse  of  the  Evil  Spirit  that  ever  denies :  he 
ever  affirms,  but  ever  conditionally.  That  which  is  uncon- 
ditioned is,  in  its  purity,  beyond  our  power  of  speech  ;  yet  it  is 
the  only  reality,  the  one  thing  needful.  The  forms  of  our 
religions  and  philosophies  pass  and  change  like  clouds  :  the 
essence  remains  the  same.  "  Happy  those  who  share,  even  for 
a  single  day,  in  the  beatific  illusion  of  a  concrete  faith  !  But 
happier  still  would  be  he  who,  freed  from  all  illusion,  could 
reproduce  in  himself  the  Vision  celestial,  and  without  millenarian 
dreams,  without  chimerical  paradise,  without  signs  in  the 
heavens,  could  out  of  the  rectitude  of  his  will  and  the  poetry 
of  his  soul  create  anew  within  his  heart  the  true  Kingdom 
of  God  !  "  : 

Such  was  the  basis  of  Kenan's  attitude.  Intellectually  it  had 
little  in  common  with  Montaigne's  or  M6rimee's.  In  the  eyes 
of  dogmatists  it  seemed  dangerously  akin  to  Pyrrhonism, 
nihilism,  and  laxity.  The  shallow-minded  would  ape  its  negative 
side,  and  think  they  were  "  Kenanising  "  when  they  suggested 
with  a  superior  smile  that  all  was  vanity.  Both  were  blind  to 
the  fact  that  universal  scepticism  such  as  Kenan's  was  com- 
patible with  a  living  faith,  although  not  with  a  formal  creed ; 
and  that  such  a  faith  sustained  him  through  fifty  years  of  moral 
struggles  and  patient  labour. 

*  D^dicace. 

t  "Religious  Future  of  Modern  Societies,"  Questions  CcMtemporaines,  415. 

j  Vie  de  Jisus,  201. 


EKNEST  RENAN  247 

The  intellectual  attitude  of  Kenan  is  well  defined  enough  ; 
his  moral  attitude  was  more  puzzling.  His  indulgence  towards 
the  end  of  his  life  was  certainly  excessive  and  misplaced.  "  To 
understand  everything  is  to  forgive  everything."  Again,  we 
must  remember  that  he  ever  kept  the  same  high  standard  of 
duty  for  himself.  Thoroughly  French  in  this  respect,  he  hated 
self-righteousness  above  all  things ;  his  extreme  delicacy  of 
feelings,  his  scrupulous  politeness,  his  fastidious  refinement, 
made  it  unpleasant  for  him  openly  to  praise  the  qualities  for 
which  he  was  noted.  Because  he  was  a  living  example  of 
earnestness,  industry,  and  purity,  he  spoke  almost  deprecatingly 
of  these  virtues.  He  would  not  set  himself  up  as  an  example 
and  humiliate  the  weaker  brethren  with  his  perfection.  There 
is  much  self-consciousness,  afi'ectation,  and  vanity  in  such  a 
state  of  mind.  It  implies  excessive  introspection,  over-culture, 
subtlety.  Eenan  was  not  a  saint  of  the  rugged,  heroic,  single- 
minded  type.  His  scruples  may  be  a  sign  of  weakness ;  but, 
dangerous  as  they  are,  and  even  slightly  ridiculous,  they  are 
not  dishonourable. 

Besides,  Kenan's  indulgence  was  not  only  due  to  politeness 
and  self-depreciation.  It  was  also  the  result  of  genuine  kindness 
and  the  privilege  of  a  noble  soul.  Amiel,  Allier,  and  all  Protes- 
tant critics  in  general,  reproach  him  for  lacking  "  the  con- 
sciousness and  conviction  of  sin."  This  may  be  due  to  the 
purity  rather  than  to  the  alleged  shallowness  of  his  nature. 
Jesus  alone  had  a  right  to  forgive  the  adulteress,  because, 
alone  without  sin,  He  could  have  condemned  her.  On  an 
immeasurably  lower  plane  Kenan  had  the  same  right  to  exercise 
universal  charity.  Victor  Hugo,  Sainte-Beuve,  for  instance, 
were  not  qualified  for  passing  judgment  on  others,  or  for  preach- 
ing indulgence  ;  Kenan  was  pure  and  strong  enough  to  judge 
and  to  pardon. 

Kenan,  in  a  word,  had  two  standards  of  conduct,  like  all  men. 
But,  unlike  most  men,  he  kept  the  sterner  for  his  own  use.  He 
had  an  esoteric  and  an  exoteric  doctrine.  This  duality  was  due 
to  his  priestly  education  and  to  his  early  initiation  to  difficult 
sciences,  the  privilege  of  a  few.  No  ideal  could  be  higher  or 
more  austere  than  the  one    he    sets   before  the  modern  priest- 


248      FEENCH   PEOPHETS   OF  YESTEEDAY 

hood,  the  servants  of  truth.  But,  for  ages  to  come,  the  very- 
notion  of  such  an  ideal  will  remain  inaccessible  to  the  crowd. 
You  cannot  impose  scientific  Stoicism  with  the  infinite  patience 
and  self-renunciation  it  requires  on  ill-fitted,  ill-prepared  souls. 
The  ranks  of  the  new  clergy  should  be  freely  open  to  all  who 
wish  to  enter  ;  a  time  may  come  when  this  aristocracy  of 
thought  shall  embrace  all  mankind.  Meanwhile,  the  scientist 
should  not  go  out  of  his  way  and  proselytise.  He  would  thereby 
ruin  useful  illusions  which  ensure  a  certain  degree  of  order  and 
comfort  in  this  world.  If  you  destroy  those  superstitions  which, 
false  in  their  narrower  interpretation,  yet  are  symbols  of  truth 
adequate  to  the  popular  mind,  the  victory  of  truth  will  not  be 
hastened  by  a  single  day.  Great  spiritual  ambitions,  and  even 
ardent  beliefs,  in  men  too  weak  or  too  ill-balanced  to  understand 
them  philosophically,  lead,  not  to  progress,  but  to  revolutions. 
Since  Prospero  cannot  yet  control  the  government  of  the  world 
as  he  should  and  shall,  Caliban  ought  to  be  made  as  contented  as 
possible,  in  his  own  way,  so  that  he  will  not  brutally  destroy  the 
laboratory  where  the  future  is  being  made.  Thus  we  must  have 
a  "  religion,"  in  the  lowest  sense,  for  the  people,  and,  in  default 
of  a  religion,  an  easygoing  Epicurean  philosophy,  to  soothe  the 
brute  and  keep  him  quiet. 

But  whether  it  be  the  result  of  modesty,  kindness,  or  disdain, 
there  is  no  doubt  that  E-enan's  laxity  was  external,  as  it  were,  an 
attitude  towards  others,  not  towards  himself  and  his  ideal.  He 
offers  us  our  choice  :  ''  Renounce  or  enjoy ;  you  cannot  do  both. 
But,  if  you  choose  the  life  of  the  spirit,  be  humble,  and  do  not 
despise  your  brethren.  It  is  well  that  you  should  keep  a  doubt  in 
your  mind  whether  they  have  not  taken  the  better  part.  Else 
you  would  lose  touch  with  humanity,  becoming  too  wise  in  your 
own  eyes." 

Thus  the  idealist  follows  right  because  it  is  right,  without  fear 
and  without  illusion.  Not  only  does  he  not  expect  any  earthly 
or  heavenly  reward,  but  he  will  even  renounce  the  purest,  most 
disinterested  recompense — moral  credit  for  his  virtue.  No  man  is 
absolutely  unselfish,  unless  he  is  willing  to  admit  that  perhaps  all 
his  striving  is  vanity.  All  fanatics,  and  martyrs  pre-eminently, 
have  an  easy  task :  they  are  betting  on  a  certainty.     The  true 


ERNEST  RENAN  249 

saint   is  the  sceptic,  who  throws  away  the  good  of  this  world 
without  expecting  anything  in  return.* 

But  Rcnan,  who  showed  such  exquisite  modesty  so  far  as  his 
moral  qualities  were  concerned,  did  not  evince  the  same  abnega- 
tion when  it  came  to  intellectual  attainments.  He  was  quite 
willing  to  admit  that  virtue  was,  humanly  speaking,  a  delusion, 
and  that,  in  choosing  to  do  good,  he  might  be  a  dupe.  But  he 
wanted  us  to  know  that,  although  cheated,  he  was  not  deceived. 
He  acquiesced  in  Nature's  deep-laid  scheme  for  turning  man's 
selfishness  to  purposes  of  her  own,  contrary  to  the  interests  of  the 
individual.  He  smiled  approval,  thereby  reconciling  his  natural 
instinct  to  do  good  with  his  perverse  desire  of  being  clever. 

j_Idealism,  refined  almost  to  the  vanishing-point,  and  associated 
with  radical  scepticism,  is  at  one  of  the  poles  of  Kenan's  thought. 
At  the  other  is  Positivism.  Nothing  can  be  affirmed  of  the 
Absolute,  except  that  it  is,  and  the  rest  seems  to  be  ;  but,  in  the 
realm  of  relativity,  a  certain  kind  of  certitude  is  possible,  and  is 
attained  through  science.  Positive,  experimental  science  is  our 
only  safe  guide  here  below.  It  should  rule  our  world  :  at  any 
rate,  its  method  should  be  the  discipline  of  our  thought.  Now, 
the  general  basis  of  all  science  is  the  law  of  cause  and  efi'ect, 
which  leaves  absolutely  no  room  for  any  supernatural  interven- 
tion. Should  this  law  be  disproved,  no  other  would  stand,  and 
the  whole  fabric  of  our  knowledge,  the  result  of  age-long  efforts, 
would  topple  down.  Science  posits  the  exclusion  of  "piecemeal 
supernaturalism  "  within  the  limits  of  our  experience. 

Renan  does  not  deny  the  supernatural  itself,  like  the  material- 
ists of  the  coarser  type  :  the  supernatural  envelops  us  on 
every  side.  He  even  admits  the  possibility  of  our  universe  being 
a  huge  experiment,  which  may  have  begun,  and  may  finish,  at  the 
will  or  whim  of  some  transcendent  investigator.  But,  while  the 
experiment  is  going  on  undisturbed,  it  is  submitted  only  to  its 
own  laws.  What  came  before,  what  will  come  after,  is  beyond 
om*  scope,  and  is  non-existent  for  us.  Furthermore,  he  accepts 
the  idea  that  the  universe  may  some  day  become  fully  conscious, 
and  thus  free  from  existing  trammels  or  laws  :  the  age  of 
miracles  is  perhaps  ahead  of  us  instead  of  behind  us.  But, 
*  Cf.  TJie  Antichrist,  p.  102. 


250      FRENCH   PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

humanly  and  scientifically  speaking,  we  must  reject  the  possi- 
bility of  any  special  supernatural  intervention  in  the  affairs  of 
this  world. 

The  importance  of  such  a  rejection  will  readily  be  seen.  Not 
only  does  it  strike  at  the  root  of  all  great  revealed  religions, 
Christianity  not  excepted,  but  it  is  incompatible  with  the  belief 
in  Providence,  cherished  by  many  theists,  and  with  the  practice 
of  petitional  prayer.  On  this  point  Renan  is  almost  as  trenchant 
as  Taine  and  Berthelot.  Yet  prayer  came  naturally  to  him,  in 
spite  of  his  Positivism.  It  was  not  merely  the  survival  of  a 
Christian  habit,  it  was  the  inborn  tendency  of  his  soul.  One 
could  make  a  beautiful  collection  of  prayers  from  the  works  of 
a  philosopher  who  professes  not  to  believe  in  their  efficacy.  The 
last  page  of  the  Future  of  Science,  for  instance,  a  stirring,  in- 
dignant appeal  in  The  Theology  oj  Beranger,  the  truly  beautiful 
words  on  the  death  of  Jesus,*  and,  best  of  all  perhaps,  the  closing 
lines  of  the  ''  Essay  on  Metaphysics  and  its  Future,"  t  have  the 
truest  spiritual  ring.  |  But  Kenan's  theory,  contrary  to  his  own 
practice,  implied  a  theology  and  a  form  of  worship  radically 
different  from  those  hitherto  accepted  by  our  race. 

Now,  was  this  conception,  with  Renan,  the  fruit  of  meta- 
physical cogitations  or  of  scientific  research  ?  He  maintained 
that  repeatedly  science  alone  had  led  him  to  such  a  conclusion. 
"  This  [the  rejection  of  miracles]  is  not  the  consequence  of 
a  metaphysical  system,"  he  wrote  in  The  Apostles^  ;  "it  is 
based  simply  on  observation.  No  such  thing  [as  a  miracle]  has 
ever  been  established.  All  the  pretended  miraculous  events 
which  we  are  able  to  scrutinise  closely  are  found  to  be  naught 
but  delusion  or  imposture."  Yet  Renan  tells  us  that  "If  a 
single  miracle  were  proved,  we  could  not  reject  in  bulk  all  those 
of  ancient  history."  How,  then,  could  a  miracle  be  proved? 
Only  if  it  took  place  before  qualified,  critical  witnesses,  the 
modern  St.  Thomases  of  the  Academy  of  Sciences.  But,  even 
if  it  did  thus  take  place,  these  men  would  simply  study  it  as  a 

*   Vie  de  J&sus.  f  Fragments  Philosophiqzies,  332. 

}  The  prayer  on  the  Acropolis,  perhaps  the  most  perfect  passage  of  poetical 
prose  in  the  French  language,  is,  of  course,  pure  literature.  Yet  it  shows 
Renan's  persistent  fondness  for  the  form  and  spirit  of  prayer. 

§  Introduction,  xliii. 


ERNEST  RENAN  251 

curious,  unexplained  fact,  in  apparent  contradiction  with  the 
known  laws  of  Nature :  no  scientific  evidence  could  ever  bring 
them  to  admit  the  possibility  of  a  suspension  at  will  of  these 
laws.  Besides,  no  miracle  can  be  expected  under  such  circum- 
stances. It  is  a  fact  recognised  in  the  Gospels  that  faith  is  an 
essential  condition  for  the  performance  of  "great  works  "  :  Jesus 
Himself  lost  some  of  His  power  in  the  sceptical  atmosphere  of 
His  own  city  (Matt.  xiii.  58).  The  enthusiasm  that  moves 
mountains  is  without  action  on  a  scientific  balance,  sensitive 
to  a  milligramme.  A  miracle  in  a  laboratory  is  therefore  an 
impossibility  :  but  so  would  be  the  writing  of  a  great  poem, 
the  rise  of  a  great  passion — wonders  which  refuse  to  come 
to  life  under  the  microscope  of  scientists,  and  yet  are  known 
to  exist.  The  appeal  to  the  Academy  cannot  be  taken 
seriously. 

We  are  therefore  thrown  back  on  the  testimony  of  witnesses 
in  the  past,  and  Kenan's  reasoning  comes  to  this  :  We  must  re- 
ject all  documentary  evidence  in  support  of  miracles  as  un- 
historical,  ''this  is  an  absolute  law  of  criticism";  why? 
because  there  is  no  historical  evidence  in  support  of  miracles. 
Plainly,  this  is  arguing  in  a  circle,  and  the  metaphysical  origin 
of  Kenan's  Positivism  becomes  apparent.  He  was,  as  we  have 
shown  from  his  correspondence  with  his  sister,  a  disciple  of  the 
French  rationalists,  Descartes,  Malebranche,  and  a  contemporary 
of  Comte,  Littre,  Stuart  Mill,  Spencer.* 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  remark  that  in  thus  denying  a  priori 
the  possibility  of  recorded  events,  Renan  weakened  his  position 
as  a  scientist  and  a  historian,  and  laid  himself  open  to  the  accu- 
sation of  being  merely  an  enlightened  Voltaire  with  a  touch  of 
Chateaubriand  in  him.  Had  he  placed  himself  on  the  more 
modest  and  safer  ground  of  experimental  science  and  criticism, 
his  conclusions  need  not  have  been  very  difi'erent :  for,  if  we  have 
no  right  to  reject  miracles  as  impossible,  it  is  our  duty  to  cross- 
examine  as  severely  as  we  can  the  alleged  witnesses  in  their  sup- 

•  For  the  influence  of  Malebranche,  cf.  Brotlier  and  Sister  and  Philoso- 
phical Dialogues.  Littr6  is  the  only  one  of  these  men  whom  ho  repeatedly 
quoted  as  an  authority ;  he  denied  the  originality  of  Augusto  Comte,  but  in 
so  doing  endorsed  most  strongly  his  main  coutontion. 


252     FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

port :  a  duty  practised  even  by  the  Catholic  Church  before  a  new 
saint  is  added  to  her  Calendar.  It  may  well  be  doubted  whether 
the  evidence  of  the  New  Testament  writers  v/ould  at  present  be 
accepted  by  any  court  not  biased  in  their  favour.  A  great 
change  has  certainly  come  over  Christianity  in  this  respect : 
miracles  are  now  a  hindrance  rather  than  a  help.  Instead  of 
serving  as  arguments  in  favour  of  the  faith,  thay  weaken  it.  The 
spiritual  grandeur  of  Jesus  remains  the  evidence  of  His  divinity, 
in  spite  of  the  miracles.  This  very  grandeur,  to  which  Renan 
paid  full  tribute,  is  in  itself  a  miracle,  incomparably  more 
mysterious  and  more  potent  for  good  than  the  turning  of  water 
into  wine. 

Renan's  idealistic  scepticism  and  his  scientific  Positivism 
seem  to  leave  no  place  between  them  for  historical  religions  and 
metaphysical  systems.  But  if  there  is  no  certainty  beyond  the 
domain  of  facts,  and  if  all  attempts  at  expressing  the  unutterable 
are  futile,  it  does  not  follow  that  symbols  and  dreams  are  not  legi- 
timate. Vague,  changing,  delusive  as  they  are,  they  remain  our 
only  way  of  directing  our  thoughts  upwards  and  of  imagining 
our  relation  with  the  ultimate  reality.  These  great  epics  of 
human  destiny  keep  the  ideal  alive.  Suppress  all  illusion,  and 
men  will  either  shudder  before  the  mystery  of  their  fate  or  lose 
all  concern  in  it.  Poems  they  are,  in  the  truest  sense ;  creations 
of  human  genius,  of  enthusiasm  and  virtue ;  and  as  such  they 
offer,  beside  their  incomparable  spiritual  usefulness,  a  wonderful 
field  for  the  sympathetic  curiosity  of  the  critic  and  the  historian. 
Like  Quinet  and  Michelet,  like  Sainte-Beuve,  Leconte  de  Lisle, 
and  even  that  pagan  Flaubert,*  Benan  found  in  the  study  of 
religions  the  keenest  aesthetic  and  scientific  pleasure. 

As  for  metaphysics,  he  considered  it  as  an  attenuated  form 
of  religion,  without  the  glow  of  enthusiasm  and  the  picturesque, 
living  element :  religion  spoilt  rather  than  strengthened  by  an 
attempt  at  clearness  and  consistency.  But,  too  sceptical — or  too 
poor  t — to  create  a  religion  of  his  own,  he  had  to  be  content  with 

*  Temptation  of  St.  Anthony. 

f  He  suggested  that  with  a  few  millions  one  could  start  a  religion  in  the 
East  ("  The  Experimental  Method  in  Religion,"  Nouvelles  Etudes  d'Histoire 
Beligieuse). 


ERNEST  RENAN  253 

metaphysical  dreams,  never  forgetting,  however,  that  they  were 
dreams  and  not  doctrines. 

Yet  these  dreams  had  one  unifying  principle — that  of  develop- 
ment. Life  means  change  ;  nothing  is,  everything  grows.  This 
notion  of  becoming  as  opposed  to  bci7ig  was  applied  by  Kenan 
not  only  to  history,  literature,  and  psychology,  but  to  the 
spiritual  world.  God,  he  said,  is  the  sum  of  our  supernatural 
needs,  '^  the  category  of  the  ideal  "  (that  is  to  say,  the  necessary 
form  under  which  we  conceive  the  ideal),  as  space  and  time  are 
the  categories  of  bodies  {i.e.,  the  forms  under  which  we  con- 
ceive bodies).*'  The  one  thing  we  know  with  any  clearness 
about  the  ideal  is  our  ideal,  which,  from  race  to  race,  from  age 
to  age,  and,  in  the  individual,  from  year  to  year,  keeps  changing, 
growing,  and,  let  us  hope,  improving.  The  highest  conception 
of  the  ideal  is  therefore  the  nearest  approach  to  God,  the 
clearest  consciousness  of  Him.  God,  then,  has  a  double  exist- 
ence :  one  absolute,  infinite :  of  this  we  can  know  and  say 
nothing,  as  it  transcends  our  thought  and  speech  ;  the  other 
is  the  manifestation  of  the  Divine  in  this  world,  the  immanent 
God  within  us.  In  this  sense,  our  consciousness  of  God  may 
be  termed  God's  consciousness  of  Himself,  His  self-realisation 
through  chosen  souls,  his  more  and  more  complete  incarnation. 
"  God  is  immanent  in  the  whole  of  the  Universe,  and  in  each  of 
the  beings  that  compose  it.  Only  He  does  not  know  Himself 
equally  in  all ;  He  knows  Himself  better  in  the  plant  than  in 
the  rock,  in  the  animal  than  in  the  plant,  in  man  than  in  the 
animal,  in  the  intelligent  man  than  in  the  dullard,  in  the  man 
of  genius  than  in  the  intelligent  man,  in  Socrates  than  in  the 
man  of  genius,  in  Buddha  than  in  Socrates,  in  Christ  than  in 
Buddha.  Such  is  the  fundamental  thesis  of  our  theology.  If 
such  was  the  meaning  of  Hegel,  let  us  be  Hegelians."  t 

Every  progress  of  the  ideal  means  therefore  a  progress  of 
God.     God,  as  a  growing  consciousness  through  the  world,  is 

*  Etudes  d'Histoire  Religieuse,  M.  Feuerbach,  p,  419.  Note  again  the 
influence  of  Malebranche.  Cf.  Vigny's  "Son  Verbe  est  le  s^jour  do  noa 
intelligences — Commo  ici-bas  I'espace  est  le  lieu  do  nos  corps." 

t  "  Sciences  of  Nature  and  Historical  Sciences,"  in  PialogucK  ct  Fragments 
Philoso2)hi(iues,  p.  187. 


254      FRENCH  PROPHETS   OP  YESTERDAY 

"  in  the  making."  He  is  not  yet  fully  :  He  shall  be  more  and 
more.  To  help  His  self-realisation  is  to  serve  the  one  purpose 
of  the  universe,  and  to  partake  of  eternal  life.  When  God  is 
perfect,  He  will  be  conscious  of  all  the  efforts  that  have  made 
His  completion  possible ;  all  the  obscure  workers  towards  the 
great  end  shall  then  live  again  in  His  thought ;  they  shall  rise 
from  their  asonial  sleep,  which  to  them  will  be  as  brief  as  an 
instant.  Personal  immortality  may  thus  be  the  reward  of  those 
who  have  advanced  the  coming  of  the  Kingdom.  Thus  religion 
consists  in  worshipping  in  spirit  and  in  truth,  without  any 
personal  hope  or  desire,  and  solely  for  the  self-realisation  of  the 
Divine,  or,  in  more  orthodox  terms,  for  the  glory  of  God.  And 
this  was  the  religion  of  Christ  as  Renan  takes  it,  the  *'  absolute 
and  final  religion."  In  His  feeling  of  union  wdth  the  Father 
Christ  was  truly  Divine,  truly  the  Incarnation  of  God. 

After  a  new  term  of  daily  intercourse  with  this  great  master, 
we  feel  more  than  ever  how  crude,  how  incomplete  is  our  sketch 
of  his  all-embracing  thought ;  clearer,  too,  is  our  belief  that  his 
teaching  was,  on  the  whole,  positive,  and,  like  the  example  of 
his  life,  a  power  for  good. 

A  genius  of  the  ardent,  missionary  type,  like  St.  Paul,  even 
with  a  touch  of  fanaticism  and  heroic  madness,  appeals  more 
strongly,  not  only  to  the  popular  mind,  but  to  every  one's  heart, 
than  a  critic  and  a  philosopher,  however  intelligent  and  stainless 
he  may  be.  We  keep  our  sympathy  for  high-aspiring  men 
wounded  in  the  battle,  like  Lamennais  or  Proudhon,  rather 
than  for  one  who  had  also  a  hard  fight  to  go  through,  but 
triumphed,  and  received  his  due  reward  in  the  form  of  prosperity, 
respect,  and  praise.  We  like  to  meet  even  the  greatest  on 
equal  terms,  as  human  beings  like  ourselves :  Kenan's  smile 
of  polite  aloofness  is  an  impassable  barrier.  He  keeps  us  at 
a  distance,  as  he  kept  even  Berthelot.  For  these  reasons,  we 
cannot  entertain  for  him  the  same  warm  feeling  as  for  some 
weaker  and  lesser  men.  Yet  this  should  not  make  us  unjust 
towards  him  ;  we  should  not  seek  in  criticising  him  a  mean 
revenge  for  his  superiority.  And  this  seems  to  be  a  favourite 
sport  with  his  modern  biographers. 


ERNEST  RENAN  255 

They  call  him  frivolous:  but  for  fifty  years  he  devoted  his 
strength  to  miuute  and  patient  research,  and  died  in  harness, 
leaving  forty  scholarly  volumes  behind  him.  They  call  him 
elusive  and  shifty :  but  he  never  varied  in  his  main  course,  and, 
when  he  presented  alternative  hypotheses,  he  did  so  out  of  broad- 
mindedness  and  candour.  They  call  him  pliant,  effeminate,  a 
moral  weakling :  but  he  went  boldly  through  a  spiritual  ordeal 
from  which  most  men  of  the  rugged  and  strenuous  type  would 
shrink  and  seek  refuge  in  dogmatism  or  compromise.  They  call 
him  selfish  and  a  Hedonist,  whilst  he  preached  and  practised 
absolute  renunciation  to  w^hatever  was  not  the  ideal.  They 
rebuke  him  for  his  smiling  benevolence,  as  if  cheerfulness  was 
not  the  supreme  grace  of  the  strong,  and  indulgence  the 
privilege  of  the  pure. 

Democratic  France,  whom  he  criticised  unsparingly,  and,  we 
believe,  unjustly,  understands  him  better  than  the  cultured  few 
he  tried  so  hard  to  please.  She  instinctively  reveres  him  as  one 
of  her  spiritual  masters.* 

*  It  is  instructive  to  note  that  the  two  most  famous  adepts  of  Rcnanism, 
Jules  Lemaitre  and  Anatole  France,  showed  no  lack  of  conviction  and 
decision  when  called  upon  to  act  :  they  took  opposite  sides  in  the  Dreyfus 
crisis,  but  with  equal  energy.  This  holds  true  of  Barres  and  Bourget,  whom 
Professor  Irving  Babbitt  places  among  the  Renanians,  although  they  are 
more  obviously  the  followers  of  Taine  (and  in  a  minor  degree  of  Stendhal). 


CONCLUSION 

The  study  of  Renan  brings  our  survey  to  a  fitting  close.  A 
Catholic  by  birth,  education,  and  temperament,  a  Protestant 
in  his  conservative  and  reverent  freedom  of  thought,  a  Rationalist 
after  Descartes  and  Malebranche,  a  Positivist  with  Littre, 
Taine,  and  Berthelot,  a  sceptic  like  Montaigne,  a  metaphysician 
of  the  Hegelian  school,  a  Voltairian  in  his  irony,  a  disciple  of 
Chateaubriand  in  his  aesthetic  emotionalism — he  was  the  living 
synthesis  of  his  nation  and  of  his  time. 

If  we  glance  back  on  these  twenty-two  years,  we  cannot  help 
being  impressed  with  their  intellectual  activity,  and  with  the 
intensity  of  their  spiritual  interests.  This  view  is  contrary 
to  a  prejudice  of  long  standing.  Liberals  and  Democrats,  half 
a  century  ago  and  almost  to  the  present  day,  were  wont  to 
deplore  the  profound  decadence  of  French  literature  under  the 
Empire,*  and  the  cynical  frivolity  of  that  period  has  remained 
a  byword.  We  are  beginning  to  wonder  at  the  short-sighted- 
ness of  these  criticisms,  just  as,  let  us  hope,  our  successors 
will  wonder  at  our  injustice  to  the  greatness  of  our  own  age. 
A  time  when  Victor  Hugo,  Vigny,  Sainte-Beuve  were  at  their 
best ;  when  Michelet,  Quinet,  George  Sand  had  fallen  little, 
if  at  all,  below  their  highest  standard ;  when  the  new  genera- 
tions could  boast  such  names  as  Taine,  Renan,  Scherer,  among 
historians  and  critics,  Flaubfiil  and  the  Goncourts  among 
novelists,  Augier  and  Dumas  among  dramatists,  Eeconte  de 
Lisle  among  poets ;  while  science  was  represented  by  Claude 
Bernard,  Littre,  Pasteur,  Berthelot — such  a  time  shows  no  sign 
of  decay,  no  lack  of  power  and  earnestness  in  the  French  mind. 

*  Cf.  Scherer,  L'Ere  Imjpdriale. 
256 


CONCLUSION  257 

Nor  should  the  catchword  **  imperial  corruption  "  prevent  us 
from  recognising  the  high  spiritual  aspirations  of  that  epoch. 
Without  mentioning  the  activities  of  priests — and  Lacordaire, 
Dupanloup,  Gratry  are  not  to  be  slighted — a  nation  cannot 
be  said  to  be  indifferent  to  religious  problems  when  it  takes 
interest  in  such  works  as  Guizot's  Meditations,  Eeynaud's 
Earth  and  Heaven,  Proudhon's  Justice  in  the  Revolution  and 
in  the  Church,  Sainte-Beuve's  Port-Roj/al,  Scherer's  early 
essays,  Kenan's  whole  production,  and  when  the  ''  echo  of  his 
century,"  Victor  Hugo,  could  write  such  immense  theological 
epics  as  The  End  of  Satan  and  God.  These  works, 
cited  at  random,  were  not  isolated  :  they  are  but  a  few  peaks 
in  a  mighty  range.  Novels,  poems,  and  plays  were  full  of 
religious  problems  and  mystic  lore.  Innumerable  were  the 
books  and  pamphlets  on  ''religion  and  science,"  "atheism," 
"independent  ethics,"  "duty,"  "natural  theology,"  eccle- 
siastical controversies,  the  history  and  psychology  of  spiritual 
movements.  The  Life  of  Jesus  and  the  Syllabus  were  national 
events.  For  months  the  glittering,  frivolous  Paris  of  Napo- 
leon III.  talked  of  little  else.  Hundreds  of  articles,  scores  of 
volumes,  were  written  for  and  against  these  two  documents. 
France  in  the  sixties,  materialistic  as  it  seemed,  discussed 
religion  with  an  intensity,  an  earnestness,  which  contrasts 
curiously  with  the  good-humoured  indifference  of  the  British 
and  American  public  at  the  present  day. 

But — and  this  was  even  more  striking — all  this  activity  was 
cheerless.  In  the  fields  of  commerce  and  industry  there  was 
a  certain  spaciousness  of  spirit,  a  joyous  enthusiasm,  as  of  a 
young  giant,  very  different  from  the  present  cautious  tone  of 
the  business  world  in  France,  and  comparable  only  to  the 
buoyancy  and  energy  of  the  American  West.  In  the  spiritual 
world  there  was  no  listlessness,  but  a  chill  gloom  prevailed. 
The  Humanitarians  had  lost  the  day  in  1848  ;  the  Catholics 
were  bitterly  aggressive  in  their  retrograde  policy  ;  the  Posi- 
tivists,  although  neither  despondent  nor  diffident,  were  fully 
aware  of  existing  evils,  cautious  and  slow  in  their  hopes  of 
improvement.  It  seemed  as  though,  after  an  indecisive  battle, 
everybody  felt  disappointed  and  uncertain  of  the  future. 

17 


258      FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

The  Supernaturalists,  who  called  themselves  the  Orthodox, 
held  pessimism  to  be  an  essential  part  of  their  faith.  They 
believed  human  nature  corrupt,  as  the  result  of  the  Fall,  and 
physical  nature  a  delusion  and  a  snare :  this  world  w'as  a 
vale  of  tears,  this  earthly  life  a  time  of  trial  and  affliction. 
Salvation  was  impossible  without  celestial  assistance  ;  happi- 
ness, justice  were  not  to  be  expected  in  this  life,  but  in  the 
life  to  come.  The  Naturalists  thought  this  earth  was  fair, 
and  man  essentially  good  :  noble  aspirations,  pleasure  in  doing 
right,  love  for  his  fellow-mortals,  were  inborn  in  him.  If  only 
the  theological  nightmare  which  caused  absolutism,  intolerance, 
oppression  could  be  dispelled  ;  if,  freed  from  the  inhibitions 
of  self-diffidence  and  terror,  all  the  expansive  forces  of  the 
human  soul  were  released,  the  Golden  Age,  the  "  Kingdom 
of  God  among  us  "  would  be  at  hand.  It  would  be  unjust  to 
say  that  Humanitarianism  was  tried  in  1848  and  was  found 
wanting.  It  was  not  given  a  fair  chance.  This,  in  itself, 
proves  that  as  a  working  faith  it  was  at  least  premature  : 
even  if  it  was  not  fundamentally  wrong,  men  were  not  ready 
to  receive  it.  Such  was  the  conclusion  generally  drawn. 
Belief  in  human  nature  was  rejected  ;  belief  in  a  supernatural 
world,  where  all  the  ills  and  injustices  of  this  one  would  be 
righted,  was  greatly  shaken  and  more  than  half-ruined.  The 
result  was  despair — the  sombre  resignation  of  Taine  and  Vigny, 
the  blasphemies  of  Leconte  de  Lisle  and  Mme.  Ackermann. 

Supernaturalists  and  Humanitarians  had  more  in  common 
than  they  thought.  The  Christians  believed  that  man,  by 
renouncing  his  nature,  by  dying  to  himself,  could  be  made 
worthy  of  eternal  bliss  ;  the  Humanitarians,  that  if  man 
followed  his  nature  and  was  more  fully,  more  truly  himself, 
he  would  be  good  and  happy  here  and  now ;  both  admitted  the 
possibility  of  sudden  regeneration,  of  conversion,  from  worldli- 
ness  in  the  first  case,  from  artificial  civilisation  in  the  second. 
It  was  this  very  notion  of  miraculous  change  lliat  the  Positivists 
rejected  most  emphatically.  There  is  a  lack  of  adjustment 
between  the  parts  of  Nature,  and  this  is  the  cause  of  our 
sufferings.  Only  a  slow  process  of  adaptation  can  reduce  the 
existing  friction — a   process   partly  automatic,  in   the  form  of 


CONCLUSION  259 

natural   selection,    partly   conscious,   in   the   form   of   culture. 
With   the    progress  of  science,  the   material   and    social   con- 
ditions of  existence  will  be  improved  :    the  Positivists  in  the 
broader  sense,  Sainte-Beuve,  Kenan,  were,  like  George  Eliot, 
"  meliorists."     But   their   meliorism   was   full   of  sadness,   for 
they   had    to    give    up   their   golden    hope    of   the    immediate 
coming  of  the  Lord.     They,  like  Scherer  and  Mme.  Ackermann, 
mourned  for  the  lost  Absolute.     Even  if  they  had  reached,  like 
Vigny  and   Taine,   "  that  high   degree   of  stoic  pride  "   which 
gives  resignation  in  default  of  happiness  ;   even  if,  like  Vigny 
in   his   last   poems   and   Renan   in    his  first  work,  they  could 
foresee  in  the  distant  future  a  stage  of  civilisation  immeasurably 
happier   than    ours,    they   knew   that    their   faith    was   incom- 
municable to  the  masses,  and  could  aflbrd  no  immediate  relief 
to  the  ills  and  woes  of  humanity.     Centuries  of  patient  toil  and 
suffering — an  imperceptible  progress,  offset  by  increased  needs 
and  aspirations — that  was  all  they  had  to  offer.     They  believed 
that    the   old    illusions — theological    and    humanitarian — were 
dying.     They  felt  that  the  coming  hope  was  too   far  off  and 
too  cold  to  have  any  virtue.     Would  there  be  an  interregnum, 
abandoned  to  materialism  and  despair  ?     What  was  to  be  the 
religious  future  of  France  ?  * 

1.  A  Return  to  Christianity :    Protestantism  and  Catholicism. 

The  first  possibility  to  be  considered  was  a  return  to  orthodoxy. 
To  accept  such  a  hypothesis  required  an  act  of  faith  :  the  trend 
of  events  seemed  to  run  in  the  opposite  direction.  The  his- 
torian, however,  should  not  limit  his  view  to  a  quarter  of  a 
century.  The  Church  has  known  dark  eclipses  and  gone 
through  innumerable  trials.  She  has  survived  persecutions, 
heresies,  and  even  those  subtler  agents  of  disintegration — 
criticism  and  indifference.  If  she  has  indeed  the  words  of 
eternal  life,  what  shall  prevail  against  her  ?  Sixteen  centuries 
after  Julian,  two  centuries  after  Voltaire,  she  has  lost  none 
of  her  vitality. 

*  Cf.  Guizot,  Meditations^  and  the  reviews  of  the  series  by  Sainte-Beuve 
and  Scherer  ;  Renan,  Metaphysics  and  its  Future,  TJte  Future  of  Science, 
Natural  Sciences  and  Historical  Sciejices,  The  Religious  Future  of  Modern 
Societies,  Philosophical  Dialogue. 


260      FKENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

"  The  Church,"  in  France,  meant  Roman  Catholicism.  No 
doubt  could  be  entertained  on  that  point.  Protestantism  counted 
for  little  in  national  life,  and  showed  no  sign  of  a  genuine 
revival.  It  would  be  ridiculous  to  assert  that  the  country  of 
Calvin  and  Coligny  was  congenitally  unfit  for  such  a  form  of 
religion.  The  same  needs  existed  in  France  as  in  England 
or    Germany :    only    they   were    supplied    in    different   ways. 

"  Protestantism  stands  for  a  historical  movement,  the  Reforma- 
tion, and  for  a  spiritual  attitude,  individual  freedom.  The 
historical   movement  was  confined   to  one  century  :    since  the 

x  close  of  the  religious  wars,  no  nation  as  a  whole  has  changed 
its  allegiance,  and  in  none  have  individual  conversions  been 
so  numerous  as  to  modify  in  any  appreciable  manner  the  balance 
of  power  between  the  two  Churches ;  the  ecclesiastical  map 
of  Europe  has  remained  substantially  the  same  since  1648. 
Wherever  Protestantism  had  conquered  a  strong  hold  before 
that  date,  it  endures  to  the  present  day,  as  a  faith  based  on 
authority  and  tradition,  a  conservative  orthodoxy,  a  junior 
branch  of  Catholicism.  In  France,  after  a  splendid  start, 
political  circumstances  worked  against  it :  its  fate  was  sealed 
by  the  abjuration  of  Henry  IV.  Had  not  the  Edict  of  Nantes 
been  revoked,  the  Protestants  would  none  the  less  have 
remained  a  hopeless  minority,  if  not  a  negligible  factor.  At 
present,  the  descendants  of  the  Huguenots  form  a  small  group, 
remarkable  in  every  respect,  but  without  any  power  of  expan- 
sion. Proud  of  their  ancestry,  helping  one  another  in  every 
legitimate  way,  they  do  not  seek,  nor  even  welcome,  converts. 
They  are  an  hereditary  spiritual  aristocracy,  and,  like  the  last 
feudal  families,  an  interesting  survival.  What  little  missionary 
work  is  done  in  France  is  due  to  the  efforts  of  foreigners,  or 
of  a  few  natives  under  foreign  leadership  :  hence  the  dishearten- 
ing results  of  these  attempts.  It  was  hoped  that  the  separation 
of  Church  and  State  would  open  an  era  of  conquest  for  French 
Protestantism :  financial  and  dogmatic  difficulties  have  been, 
so  far,  the  only  fruit  of  the  new  regime.  Traditionally, 
Christianity  in  France  is  linked  to  the  Roman  Church.* 
As  for  the  second  aspect  of  Protestantism — spiritual  indi- 
*  Cf.  Eenan,  Saint  Paul,  p.  287. 


CONCLUSION  261 

vidualism,  religious  free-thought — it  exists  in  France,  but  in  a 
slightly  different  form,  and  under  another  name.  The  revolt 
against  all  external  authority  has  not  spared  a  book  which, 
hallowed,  collected,  preserved,  edited,  interpreted  by  the  Church, 
is  a  Church  in  itself.  The  men  who  fixed  for  us  the  canon  of 
Holy  Scriptures  had  no  more  rights  over  our  souls  than  any 
priest,  bishop,  or  pope.  Remoteness  in  the  past  does  not  make 
their  overlordshij)  any  more  legitimate.  Why  should  their  Bible 
be  our  Bible  ?  Starting  from  true  Protestant  principles,  carried 
to  their  inevitable  end,  the  French  refused  to  bow  the  knee  to  a 
paper  Pope.  Not  merely  the  interpretation  of  a  Bible  but  the 
selection  of  his  Bible,  is  the  privilege  of  every  independent 
thinker. 

Through  no  fault  of  its  own,  French  Protestantism  missed  its 
opportunity  in  the  sixteenth  century.  In  the  twentieth  its 
position  is  extremely  difficult.  As  the  embodiment  of  the 
Christian  tradition,  it  cannot  compete  with  Catholicism  ;  as  the 
champion  of  spiritual  freedom,  it  is  left  far  behind  by  secular 
philosophy.     It  represents  neither  the  past  nor  the  future. 

The  great  weakness  of  French  Catholicism  in  the  nineteenth 
century  was  its  constant  alliance  with  all  forms  of  reaction. 
This  proved  repeatedly  fatal  both  to  "  the  throne  "  and  to  *'the 
altar."  Clericalism  was  the  chief  accusation  against  Charles  X. 
and  cost  him  his  crown.  The  Roman  Question  was  for  Napo- 
leon III.  a  cause  of  endless  difficulties  at  home  and  abroad.  On 
the  other  hand,  all  the  odium  of  unpopular  regimes  fell  heavily 
upon  the  Church.  In  our  own  days,  at  the  time  of  the  Dreyfus 
case,  the  Catholics  have  shown  once  more  their  unfailing  instinct 
for  taking  the  wrong  side.  In  spite  of  the  efforts  and  warnings 
of  clear-sighted  and  moderate  men,  the  Church  has  come  to  be 
identified  with  every  obstruction  to  progress. 

America  offers  us  a  different  spectacle  :  here  Catholicism  is 
held  to  be,  on  the  w^hole,  liberal,  progressive,  tolerant,  scrupu- 
lously neutral  in  politics  ;  a  few  harmless  manifestations,  like  a 
platonic  vote  by  a  Catholic  convention  in  favour  of  the  temporal 
power  of  the  Pope,  are  politely  ignored  by  the  general  public. 
The  reactionary  attitude  uf  the  French  Catholics  is  parth'  due  to 
the   misguided   loyalty   of  a  few    influential   monarchists,   who 


262      FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

have  "  captured  "  the  Church  as  a  political  and  social  organ- 
isation. If  she  could  free  herself  from  their  fetters,  and  rely  on 
the  support  of  the  people,  her  chances  of  future  progress  would 
be  infinitely  brighter. 

But  is  this  possible  ?  The  policy  of  Eome  has  been  pretty 
consistent  during  the  past  hundred  years.  Pius  IX.  bade  fair, 
for  a  few  months,  to  be  a  modern  and  liberal  Pope — the  new 
Messiah  whom  Romantic  democracy  was  expecting.  Leo  XIII. 
was  an  enlightened  and  accomplished  diplomatist.  Yet  the 
Syllabus  remains  the  summary  of  Rome's  theory  and  practice. 
The  theologians  who  drew  up  this  document  under  Pius  IX. 
invented  nothing ;  they  simply  collected  and  tabulated  the 
decisions  of  the  Holy  See.  Leo  XIII.  avoided  with  consummate 
skill  the  difficulties  created  by  his  predecessor  :  but  he  could  not 
change,  and  had  no  wish  to  change,  the  invariable  principles  of 
the  Church.  And  Pius  X.  has  resumed  the  policy  of  reaction 
with  a  consistency,  a  thoroughness,  an  intensity  of  conviction 
which  the  world  cannot  fail  to  respect.  *' Whoever  says  that 
the  Roman  Pontiff  could  and  should  be  reconciled  with  progress 
and  modern  civilisation,  let  him  be  anathema." 

Every  man  who  attempted  such  a  reconciliation  was  warned, 
disowned,  condemned.  Lamennais  and  Hyacinthe  Loyson  were 
driven  from  the  fold,  Lacordaire  treated  with  suspicion, 
Montalembert  and  Gratry  with  positive  hostility.  The  same 
fate  has  befallen  their  successors  in  our  own  days  :  Loisy,  the 
Modernists,  Marc  Sangnier,  have  been  rebuked,  censured,  or 
even  excommunicated. 

The  diplomacy  of  Rome,  perhaps  overrated,  displays  its  skill 
in  adapting  unchangeable  principles  to  varying  national  and 
historical  conditions,  in  veiling  or  uncovering  them  as  oppor- 
tunity permits.  America,  free  from  theocratic  traditions, 
distant  from  Rome,  and,  in  spite  of  rapid  changes,  still  over- 
whelmingly Protestant,  is  shown  the  more  acceptable  side  of 
Romanism.  The  Syllabus  is  glossed  over  ;  the  American 
regime  of  neutrality  is  cheerfully  accepted,  praised  as  an  ideal 
— regardless  of  the  fact  that  Pius  X.  condemned,  not  merely  the 
French  law  of  separation  but  the  very  principle  which  prevails 
in  the   United  States.      England  and,  above    all,  continental 


CONCLUSION  263 

Europe  see  the  Papacy  at  closer  range,  and  without  any  veil. 
It  cannot  be  doubted  that  authority  of  the  most  absolute  type 
is  the  very  foundation  of  Romanism.  An  exclusive  Church, 
"without  which  there  is  no  salvation,"  ruled  by  an  infallible 
Pope  :  this  is  what  we  must  either  accept  or  ignore  ;  and  if  it 
refuses  to  be  ignored,  either  support  or  combat. 

But  this  proud  attitude  of  "  no  compromise  "  is  becoming  more 
and  more  difficult  to  maintain.     Protestantism  has  adopted  an 
expedient  which,  although  illogical  and  arbitrary,  may  succeed 
in  warding   off  the    danger  for  a    few  more  generations  ;  the 
miraculous  has  been  limited  to  the  Biblical  and  evangelic  ages ; 
the  remoteness  of  that  period  makes  it  easier  for  us  to  silence 
our  critical  objections  ;  besides,  the  original  documents  are  acces- 
sible to  none  but  a  few  scholars,  to  whom  we  leave  the  care  of 
discussing  their  authenticity  and  historicity.    Roman  Catholicism, 
on  the  contrary,  has  an  unbroken  miraculous  tradition  to  defend 
— down   to    the   present    day.       Loretto,     St.    Januarius,    La 
Salette,  Lourdes,  St.  Anthony  of  Padua,   are  integral  parts  of 
the  system.     One  may  dream  of  a  "general  confession  "  of  the 
Church,  of  a  resifting  of  miracles,  of  a  frank  abandonment  of  all 
those  which  are  palpably  absurd,  spurious,  or  fraudulent.     But  it 
is   a  dream.     Renan  was  compelled  to  recognise  that  no  con- 
cession  on  the  part  of  the  Church  was   compatible  with    her 
supernatural   claims,  which  in  their  turn  were  bound  up  with 
those  of  orthodox  Christianity.     Our  faith  is  based  on  certain 
historical  occurrences,  related  in  a  few  documents  ;  the  selection 
and  preservation  of  these  documents — their  veritable  authority — 
is  a  matter  of  tradition.     If  we  break  away  from  the  body  to 
whose  keeping  this  tradition  was  committed,  we  are  thrown  into 
*'  naturalism,"  individualism,  free-thought.     In  matters  of  faith 
no   authority  can  be  accepted  unless  it  be  infallible.     Super- 
naturalism  cannot  yield  an  inch  to  the  enemy  ;  if  a  single  one 
of  its   assertions  were   proved  to  be  false,  a  single  one  of  its 
miracles  to  be  the  result  of  deception  or  illusion,  a  single  one  of 
its  claims  to  be  based  on  a  forgery  or  a  misinterpretation,  the 
whole  fabric  would  collapse  ;  human  reason  would  reassert  its 
empire. 

Liberal  Catholicism  in  politics  has  liitherto   been  a  failure ; 


264      FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

social  Catholicism,  which  does  not  imply  any  belief  in  liberty  or 
reason,  may  have  a  future,  but  hardly  a  brilliant  one  ;  liberal 
Catholicism  in  theology  is  a  contradiction.  Under  diplomatic 
Popes,  the  Modernists  may  enjoy  a  certain  amount  of 
freedom.  If  they  are  supple  and  persistent,  they  may  escape 
excommunication,  and  a  few  individuals  like  Mgr.  Maret  or 
Mgr.  Duchesne  may  even  rise  to  high  dignities.  But  they 
cannot  renovate  the  Church.  It  was  possible  to  introduce  a 
certain  amount  of  Rationalism  into  religion  in  the  sixteenth 
century  :  faith  was  stronger,  free-thought  weaker  than  now.  At 
present  they  had  best  be  kept  apart. 

Benan  prophesied,  with  more  directness  and  insistence  than 
was  his  wont,  that  Roman  Catholicism  was  on  the  eve  of  a  schism. 
It  seemed  that  the  moderate  and  liberal  elements  could  not  for 
ever  submit  to  the  paradoxical  dictates  of  the  Absolutists.  So 
long  as  the  Popes  ruled  a  small  Italian  State,  it  was  natural  that 
the  Pontiff  should  be  an  Italian  :  after  the  loss  of  its  temporal 
power,  the  Papacy  would  become  a  held  for  the  rival  ambitions 
of  different  nations.  If  two  Popes  were  elected  by  rival 
conclaves,  each  would  "  polarise  "  in  every  country  one  element 
— either  the  liberal  or  the  conservative.  This  disruption 
would  endanger  but  also  strengthen  historical  Christianity. 
We  need  hardly  say  that,  forty  years  after  Renan's  prophecy, 
there  is  not  the  least  sign  of  its  ever  being  fulfilled.  The 
present  Modernist  movement  is  feeble  compared  with  the 
liberal  opposition  before  and  during  the  Vatican  Council.  In 
the  crisis  of  the  Separation  the  French  Catholics  obeyed  the 
Pope  without  a  murmur,  although  his  orders  were  contrary  to 
their  known  desires.  Never  have  unity  and  discipline  been  more 
rigidly  enforced  and  more  willingly  accepted.  Either  Renan, 
with  the  power  of  vision  of  a  historian  and  a  poet,  read  into  a 
distant  future  which  to  us  is  absolutely  dark,  or  he  was  for  once 
mistaken  in  his  prophecy. 

If  Rome  cannot  alter  her  dogmas  so  as  to  suit  the  modern 
mind,  is  it  possible  for  France,  after  rejecting  them,  to  receive 
them  anew?  Will  the  country  of  Voltaire  abjure  Rationalism, 
and  adopt  authority  again  as  its  spiritual  guide  ?  There-  have 
been  individual  cases  of  such  conversions  :  Augustin  Thierry,  a 


CONCLUSION  265 

"weary  rationalist,"  sought  rest  in  the  Catholic  faith  :  "  What 
I  need  at  present  is  not  broad  but  narrow  ideas,"  he  said. 
That  the  nation  as  a  whole  will  ever  follow  his  example  is 
doubtful.  Weary  of  sheer  Rationalism  France  undoubtedly  is ; 
she  is  sick  of  logical  certitudes  disproved  by  facts,  of  facts  that 
lead  nowhither,  of  dreams  that  are  neither  comforting  nor 
beautiful ;  intellectual  recklessness  is  no  longer  her  besetting 
sin.  But  among  the  many  systems  she  has  tried  in  the  past 
and  found  wanting,  Catholicism,  its  theology,  its  history,  its 
ecclesiasticism  is  the  one  she  knows  best  and  deems  most  dis- 
appointing. 

A  Catholic  reformation,  a  national  conversion,  being  equally 
improbable,  there  remains  another  chance  of  conciliation.  The 
Church  still  represents  a  great  spiritual  force,  and  especially  a 
great  moral  discipline  ;  why  should  not  she  and  the  modern 
world  tacitly  agree  to  ignore  the  objectionable  features  which 
cannot  openly  be  either  given  up  or  believed  in  ?  King 
George  V.,  we  are  told,  is  still  supposed  to  be  the  owner  of  all 
the  land  in  Great  Britain  :  if  such  a  theoretical  right  actually 
exists,  who  would  move  his  little  finger  for  its  abolition  ?  It  is 
picturesque  and  harms  no  one.  Through  such  a  silent  under- 
standing members  of  the  Broad  Church  party  within  the 
Anglican  Establishment  reconcile  genuine  loyalty  to  their 
ecclesiastical  traditions  with  perfect  freedom  of  thought.  But 
this  agreement  is  based  on  indifference.  We  cannot  silently 
drop  that  which  we  deem  vital.  There  is  enough  spiritual 
vitality  both  in  French  Catholicism  and  in  its  opponents  to 
make  such  a  truce  unthinkable. 

The  Radical  opposition  of  the  Roman  Church  to  modern 
civilisation  does  not  mean  that  she  is  doomed,  in  France,  to 
rapid  extinction.  She  still  has  incomparable  assets.  Although 
a  large  proportion  of  the  people  have  left  her,  the  force  of  inertia 
will  long  keep  the  majority  within  the  fold.  Her  conservative 
attitude  at  least  gives  her  the  clientele  of  the  nobility  and  of  the 
upper  middle  class,  whose  aim  it  is  to  imitate  the  old  aristocracy 
in  everything.  Her  pomps,  her  pilgrimages,  her  miracles,  will 
appeal,  perhaps  eternally,  to  a  large  number  of  souls.  Her 
antiquity,     her    magnitude,    the     artistic     treasures    she    still 


266      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF   YESTERDAY 

possesses,  will  attract  not  a  few  men  of  the  aesthetic-senti- 
mental type.  Her  moral  discipline,  often  accused  of  undue 
laxity,  but  in  many  cases  rigid  and  salutary,  will  commend  itself 
to  those  who  need  guidance  and  support.  Her  charitable 
organisation  offers  a  splendid  field  for  men  and  women  who  are 
eager  to  serve.  Her  monasteries  and  convents,  which  are  not 
all  prohibited  by  law,  and  must  be  more  freely  tolerated  in  the 
future,  are  an  ideal  haven  for  the  poor  in  spirit,  the  unworldly, 
the^wounded  souls.  Ascetic  and  gorgeous,  sensuous  and  mystic, 
absurd  and  impregnably  logical  in  its  defiance  of  common  sense, 
Catholicism,  with  its  absolute  claims,  its  miracles,  and  its 
hierarchy,  will  survive  indefinitely. 

The  opposition  against  it  is  already  weakening.  Few  indeed 
and  negligible  are  the  French  free-thinkers  or  the  Anglo-Saxon 
Protestants  who  still  consider  Popery  as  the  embodiment  of  all 
evil.  The  vehement  vituperations  of  Proudbon  and  Leconte  de 
Lisle  are  now  read  with  a  smile.  Voltairianism,  in  a  certain 
sense,  is  not  dead  ;  it  is  picked  up,  as  a  convenient  weapon  of 
defence,  whenever  there  is  some  danger  of  a  theocratic  revival. 
Anti-clericalism,  which  is  purely  political  and  should  not  be 
mistaken  for  anti-Catholicism,  is  not  a  sectarian  passion  but  a 
vital,  although  unpleasant,  necessity  in  any  modern  State.* 
But,  while  Voltairianism  is  still  effective,  it  has  lost  caste  :  it 
is  held  to  be  shallow  and  vulgar.  Chateaubriand,  Michelet, 
Comte,  Sainte-Beuve,  Taine,  and  above  all  Kenan,  have  taught 
us  a  new  spirit.  Modern  French  thinkers  that  do  think  have 
nothing  but  reverence  for  the  historical  grandeur  of  the  Church, 
for  the  enormous  capital  of  human  energy  and  Divine  aspirations 
which  it  represents.  They  feel  that  the  world  would  be  the 
poorer  if  so  much  power  and  beauty  were  suddenly  to  disappear. 
But  all  this  respect  and  sympathy  does  not  make  them  believe 
in  what  Catholicism  holds  to  be  essential.  Chateaubriand's 
orthodoxy,  based  on  the  aesthetic  sentiment,  was  dangerously 
vague  and  equivocal.  Kome  and  the  free-thinkers  have  agreed 
on    clearing    away    such    ambiguities.     Fairness,    admiration, 

*  Cf.  the  opposition  bo  the  alleged  political  influence  of  the  Mormon 
Church — quite  different  from  anti-Mormonism  on  theological  or  ethical 
grounds. 


CONCLUSION  267 

reverence,  do  not  necessarily  imply  adhesion,  belief.  On  the 
contrary,  a  broad-minded,  sympathetic,  but  critical  listener  is 
invincible  in  his  scepticism,  whilst  an  accident  may  turn  an 
unjust  persecutor,  like  St.  Paul,  into  the  most  active  apostle. 
The  Church,  from  her  own  point  of  view,  was  justified  in 
singling  out  Renan  as  her  most  dangerous  enemy.  Neither  can 
we  blame  her  for  maintaining  the  integrity  of  her  principle,  and, 
like  the  Count  of  Chambord,  preferring  defeat  to  compromise. 
In  spite  of  recent  conversions  confessedly  due  to  political  causes, 
the  divorce  between  Catholicism  and  the  leaders  of  French 
thought  seems  irremediable.  This  was  already  evident  forty 
years  ago  :  all  the  great  writers  were  openly  or  tacitly  estranged 
from  the  Church.  Since  that  time  a  quiet  revolution  has  taken 
place.  The  Empire,  like  the  Republic,  professed  to  be  neutral 
in  religion  ;  as  a  matter  of  fact,  both  regimes  practised  tolerance 
rather  than  neutrality.  But  under  Napoleon  III.  Catholicism 
was  still  implicitly  the  religion  of  the  State ;  at  present  free- 
thought  is  quasi-official.  The  general  elections  which  followed 
the  vote  of  the  Separation  law  showed  that  this  state  of  mind 
was  not  limited  to  the  political  personnel  of  the  Republic. 
Catholicism  has  a  future  in  France  as  everywhere  else  in  the 
world  ;  but  it  will  never  be  again  the  leading  factor  in  the 
religious  evolution  of  the  country.  The  eldest  daughter  of  the 
Church  is  now  emancipated. 

2.  New  Churches  and  New  Religions. 

Would  a  new  Church  fare  any  better?  Public  opinion,  as 
a  rule,  is  strongly  prejudiced  against  such  attempts.  In  the 
eyes  of  the  people  they  are  sacrilegious,  whilst  the  educated 
refuse  to  take  them  seriously.  The  efi'orts  of  the  French 
Revolution  in  that  line  are  still  enveloped  in  a  mist  of  legend. 
The  Cult  of  Reason  is  described,  even  in  scholarly  books,  as  the 
enthronisation  of  a  prostitute  on  the  altar  of  Notre-Dame.* 
The  ceremony  in  honour  of  the  Supreme  Being  is  associated 
with  the  hateful  memory  of  Robespierre,  who  acted  as  officiating 
priest.     The  Theophilanthropists    have  escaped    total    oblivion, 

*  In  spite  of  the  attempted  rehabilitation  of  Chaumette  by  E.  Quinet 
and  Aulard. 


268     FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

because  Lareveillere-Lepeaux,  an  obscure  member  of  the 
Directoire,  was  connected  with  the  sect.  The  Constitutional 
Church,  although  neither  a  farce  nor  even  a  complete  failure, 
never  had  any  real  vitality.  All  this  curious  religious  growth 
of  the  eighteenth  century  at  its  close  was  swept  away  by  the 
Catholic  reaction,  both  sentimental  and  political,  led  by 
Chateaubriand  and  Bonaparte  at  the  time  of  the  Consulate. 

From  1830  to  1840  the  spiritual  unrest  reached  an  extra- 
ordinary degree.  France  was  big  with  Messianic  hopes.  The 
words  of  Musset,  "  Who  among  us  is  going  to  be  a  god  ?  "  were 
not  a  mere  rhetorical  question ;  George  Sand's  Spiridion, 
which  to  Thackeray  seemed  arrant  nonsense,  was  in  tune 
with  the  exaltation  of  the  day.  Numberless  Churches  sprang 
up,  most  of  them  negligible,  like  the  schism  of  Abbe  Chatel,* 
or  even  grotesque,  like  the  synthetic  religion  of  the  Mapah.f 
But  none  survived  the  early  effeiwescence  of  Romanticism. 
The  Liberal-Gallican  schism  of  Father  Hyacinthe  Loyson 
(1870)  led  to  nothing.  The  man,  owing  to  his  talent,  his 
earnestness,  his  true  nobility  of  soul,  escaped  odium  and 
ridicule  ;  but  the  Church  is  now  one  more  curious  piece  in  the 
grand  archaeological  museum  of  the  capital.  To  the  present 
day  queer  little  sects  will  crop  up  in  the  great  cities  and  thrive 
for  a  season.  Gnosticism  is  periodically  revived.  Theosophy 
and   other   forms    of    Hinduism    have    a   flickering   existence ; 

*  As  we  are  concerned  vrith  the  national  significance  of  such  movements, 
not  with  their  intrinsic  merit,  we  simply  register  the  verdict  —right  or  wrong 
— of  public  opinion.  Abbe  Chatel's  Church,  in  so  far  as  it  was  a  continuation 
of  the  Constitutional  Church,  was  interesting,  had  some  success,  and  was 
shabbily  treated  by  the  Government  of  Louis-Philippe,  Perhaps  an 
attitude  of  friendly  neutrality  on  the  part  of  that  Government  would  have 
enabled  it  to  linger  a  while  longer, 

t  The  Mapah,  apostle  of  "Evadism,"  who,  from  his  "pontifical  garret," 
requested  the  Pope  to  abdicate  in  his  favour,  seems  to  have  been  a  sincere 
and  noble  soul,  coming  a  few  centuries  too  late,  or  a  few  thousand  miles  too 
far  West — or  East.  Cf .  Louis  Beybaud's  amusing  caricature  of  such  attempts 
in  Jerome  Paturot,  and  a  curious  chapter  in  the  Memoirs  of  the  elder 
Dumas,  As  for  Hyacinthe  Loyson  mentioned  infra,  he  is  still  alive,  and 
grows  broader  in  his  religious  sympathies.  His  work  is  carried  on  by  a 
little  Church  which  is  a  curious  synthesis  of  all  Catholic  parties  defeated 
by  Rome :  Jansenism,  Gallicanism,  the  adversaries  of  the  Concordat  and 
those  of  papal  infallibility,  [Father  Hyacinthe  Loyson  died  while  this  book 
was  in  the  press.] 


CONCLUSION  269 

Babism,  which  has  admirable  parts,  has  a  few  sectaries ;  some 
twenty  years  ago  Sdr  Josephin  Peladan  provided  mild  amuse- 
ment for  the  Boulevards  with  his  Neo-Rosicruciau  school. 
M.  Jules  Bois  has  devoted  a  whole  volume  to  The  Little 
Religions  of  Paris.  As  a  rule,  there  is  more  conscious  pose 
than  even  self-delusion  and  more  "literature  "  than  spirituality 
in  these  pseudo-mystic  quests — not  to  mention  the  cases  when 
sensuality  is  one  of  the  ingredients  of  the  cult. 

Saint- Simonism,  of  course,  is  of  a  different  order.  It 
remains  one  of  the  most  curious  phenomena  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  It  had  many  elements  of  a  true  religion.  First  of 
all,  it  was  a  spontaneous  growth,  which  developed  after  the 
death  of  Saint- Simon.  It  was  not  bound  to  any  narrow 
formulary :  it  was  based  on  the  new  spirit  pervading  the 
numerous  writings  of  a  versatile  and  erratic  man  of  genius. 
This  gave  it  an  elasticity  which  Positivism,  for  instance, 
absolutely  lacked.  It  came  at  a  time  of  religious  fermentation 
and  political  upheaval.  It  attracted,  not  an  ignorant  and 
superstitious  crowd,  not  a  frivolous  set  of  idlers  and  sensation- 
seekers,  but  some  of  the  best  minds  of  the  time.  Auguste 
Comte,  Augustin  Thierry,  Leroux,  Reynaud,  H.  Carnot, 
Michel  Chevallier,  Gueroult,  Sainte-Beuve  were,  for  a  time  at 
least,  interested  in  the  movement.  The  orthodox  Saint- 
Simonians,  Olinde  Rodrigues,  Enfantin,  Bazard,  Barrault,  were 
unusually  able  men.  The  "  Father,"  with  all  his  weaknesses, 
retained  to  the  last  an  extraordinary  power  of  fascination. 
They  had  preachers  and  missionaries ;  they  were  eager 
for  martyrdom.  Had  Enfantin  been  massacred  by  the  mob 
before  the  era  of  difficulties  began,  we  might  have  had  one 
prophet  the  more  on  the  rolls  of  religious  history.  Their  lives 
were  transfigured  :  Menilmontant  became  a  sacred  spot.  Thirty 
years  later,  although  Saint- Simonism  had  apparently  failed  in 
every  respect,  although  it  had  drifted  into  objectionable  courses, 
although  its  Pope  himself  outlived  his  early  enthusiasm,  the 
sane,  practical  men — bankers,  railroad  promoters  and  directors — 
who  had  been  Saint- Simonians,  kept  holy  the  memory  of  these 
few  months,  during  which  they  had  caught  a  glimpse  of  a  new 
heaven  and  a  new  earth.     Renan,  who  saw  a  number  of  them 


270      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

in  their  old  age,  was  repeatedly  impressed  with  the  tender  and 
reverent  emotion  which  these  souvenirs  aroused  in  them.  But 
there  was  no  second  generation  :  a  few  younger  men,  like 
Maxime  Du  Camp,  still  used  Saint- Simonian  phraseology  in  their 
correspondence  with  Enfantin ;  the  sect  died  with  its  Father. 
No  living  trace  is  left  of  this  singularly  fascinating  attempt. 

The  mystic  and  ritual  aspects  of  Positivism  were  not 
developed  until  the  late  forties,  although  their  inception  can  be 
traced  in  Comte's  mind  some  twenty  years  earlier.  When  the 
Religion  of  Humanity  was  finally  promulgated,  it  seemed  an 
anachronism,  the  age  was  too  matter-of-fact  for  that  kind  of 
Positivism.  The  authority  of  its  founder,  and  of  such  men  as 
Pierre  Laffitte  and  Frederic  Harrison,  commands  respect  for 
the  Church  of  Auguste  Comte.  It  is  certainly  not  absurd,  nor 
contrary  to  the  first  principles  of  Comte's  philosophy.  Littre 
himself,  who  seceded  on  account  of  the  theological  tendencies 
of  the  master,  said  a  few  years  before  his  death  (1878)  :  "  The 
V  truth  is  that,  as  the  Positivist  regime  gets  stronger,  something 
in  that  direction  will  have  to  be  done."  But  such  as  planned 
by  Comte  in  its  minutest  details,  the  new  Church  was  the  model 
of  an  artificial  creation,  cold,  arbitrary,  lifeless.  Positivism, 
under  many  names,  and  taught  by  many  independent  masters, 
has  been  the  ruling  influence  in  European  thought  for  the  last 
half-century.  The  Positivist  Church,  on  the  contrary,  grouped 
but  a  handful  of  men,  and  its  influence  remained  insignificant. 

It  is  not  among  the  new  Churches,  therefore,  that  we  must 
seek  the  religion  of  the  future.  The  ecclesiastical  system 
and  the  ritual  of  Catholicism  are  so  perfect  that  they  prevent 
the  development  of  any  rival  organism.  If  the  new  Church 
is  less  elaborate  in  its  services  and  hierarchy  than  the  old, 
it  seems  weak  and  poor  in  comparison ;  if  it  attempts  to  vie 
with  Rome  in  these  respects,  it  looks  like  a  ridiculous  counterfeit 
of  a  time-honoured  institution.  A  new  religion,  without 
Messiah,  without  miracles,  can  have  neither  regular  clergy 
nor  set  forms  of  worship.  If  a  ritual  is  to  be  evolved,  it 
must  be  the  growth  of  centuries. 

France  had  in  the  nineteenth  century  a  number  of  these  free 
and  purely  spiritual  religions.     The  most  dogmatic,   the   only 


CONCLUSION  271 

one  which  s€3ured  some  form  of  official  recognition,  was 
"  Nakiral  Religion  "  or  Theism,  the  faith  of  Voltaire,  Rousseau, 
Franklin,  Victor  Cousin,  Jules  Simon,  and  likewise  of  Beranger 
and  M.  Homais.  It  had  its  gospels — The  Confession  of  Faith 
of  a  Savoyard  Vicar,  Cousin's  On  the  TriiCy  the  Beautiful,  and 
the  Good,  Simon's  Duti/  and  Natural  Relir/ion.  It  harely 
missed  having  its  catechism,  which  Cousin  wanted  to  impose 
on  all  2^^hlic  schools.  It  remains  to  the  present  day,  we 
believe,  the  official  basis  of  State  education.  '*  State  Theism," 
"Eclecticism,"  "Spiritualism,"  as  it  was  diversely  called,  should 
not  be  lightly  dismissed.  It  had  its  Homais  :  but  Catholicism 
had  its  Bournisiens  and  Protestantism  its  Chadbands.  The 
fact  that  it  was  endorsed  by  "  common  sense  "  and  was  held 
to  be  a  factor  of  social  stability,  "  the  religion  of  good  citizens 
and  fathers  of  families,"  proves  little  in  its  favour  but  nothing 
against  it ;  true  religion  need  not  be  paradoxical  and  revo- 
lutionary like  early  Christianity.  Its  metaphysics  is  often 
accused  of  being  a  pale  copy  of  orthodox  theology :  perhaps 
the  reverse  would  be  truer.  Spiritualistic  Theism  goes  back 
to  Plato,  Cicero,  the  Alexandrians,  and,  in  its  relations  with 
the  Church,  gave  at  least  as  much  as  it  received.  But  there 
is  some  truth  in  the  accusation  that  such  a  "  mythology  of 
abstractions"  is  neither  natural  nor  a  religion.  Intellectually, 
it  lacks  compelling  evidence :  common  sense  is  too  often 
another  name  for  unreasoning  prejudice.  Spiritually,  it  has 
neither  mystic  appeal  nor  saving  power. 

Patriotism,  in  ancient  times,  was  closely  identified  with 
religion.  This  old  ideal  Michelet,  among  others,  proposed 
to  revive.  France,  for  the  great  Romantic  historian,  was  not 
a  mere  entity  but  a  living  person.  She  ought  to  be  our 
goddess,  even  as  Rome  was  to  her  citizens.  That  there  is 
a  religious  element  in  exalted  patriotism  cannot  be  denied. 
It  prompts  to  heroism,  to  self-sacrifice ;  it  has  its  ritual  in 
the  great  national  celebrations  ;  its  code  of  ethics  ;  its  legends  ; 
its  saints  and  martyrs ;  its  sacred  literature — anthems,  war- 
songs,  poems,  and  orations ;  its  symbols  ;  its  places  of  pil- 
grimage, its  monuments,  its  temples.  Michelet's  Life  of  Joan 
of  Arc  was  conceived  in  such  a  spirit :  he  saw  in  the  shepherdess 


272      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF  YESTllRDAY 

of  Lorraine  the  purest  incarnation  of  the  motjer-country :  his 
book  was  a  piece  of  hagiography.  Such  a  scene  as  the  federa- 
tion in  1790  transported  him.  His  whole  History  is  a  Bible, 
just  as  the  Bible  is  a  history,  full  of  hymns  and  psalms, 
prophetic  and  apocalyptic  in  spirit  and  style.  If  we  should 
object  that  patriotism  often  blunts  or  warps  the  moral  sense, 
as  in  the  case  of  Rome,  eighteenth-century  England,  revolu- 
tionary France  or  Bismarckian  Germany,  he  could  reply  that 
this  holds  true  of  all  religions  and  is  a  sure  criterion  to  know 
*■  them  by ;  fanaticism,  alas  !  seems  almost  inseparable  from 
absolute  conviction.  But  whether  patriotism  in  itself  will 
satisfy  our  deepest  spiritual  needs  is  very  doubtful.  If  it  is 
the  love  of  men  like  ourselves,  merely  because  they  happen 
to  live  on  the  same  soil  and  to  speak  approximately  the  same 
language,  it  is  not  a  very  high  ideal.  It  cannot  reach  its 
fullest  degree  of  intensity,  which  alone  gives  it  a  heroic  value, 
except  when  it  has  for  its  correlatives  exclusivism,  rivalry, 
and  even  hatred.  It  is  only  because  the  country  is  actually 
or  potentially  threatened  that  we  feel  called  upon  to  die  for 
her  honour  and  integrity.  In  times  of  peace  and  concord 
we  need  some  other  incentive  to  self-sacrifice.  To  prefer 
one's  own  interests  to  those  of  the  community  in  which  one 
lives  is  rightly  called  a  sin ;  to  prefer  the  smaller  to  the  larger 
group,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Paris  Commune,  is  accounted  a 
crime.  To  place  one's  country  above  the  commonwealth  of 
nations  cannot  be  a  virtue.  The  sentiment  which  prompts 
men  to  say  with  Carlyle,  "My  country,  right  or  wrong!"  is 
not  religion,  but  superstition.  Even  for  Joan  of  Arc,  France 
was  not  the  supreme  object  of  worship.  She  was  a  Christian 
as  well  as  a  patriot,  and  she  offered  peace  to  the  English, 
so  that  both  nations  could  unite  in  a  crusade.  This  Michelet 
himself  came  to  realise,  for  he  transferred  his  allegiance  from 
France  herself  to  the  mission  of  France,  the  Revolution. 

Towards  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  worship 
of  the  Great  Revolution  reached  a  degree  of  fervour  which  our 
generation  can  hardly  comprehend.  Lamartine's  Girondists, 
Louis  Blanc's  and  Michelet's  Histories,  all  of  which  began 
to   appear  in  1847,  were  in  their   authors'  intentions  gospels 


CONCLUSION  273 

rather  than  critical  narratives.  The  following  quarter  of  a 
century  had  a  sobering  effect  on  the  French  mind.  De  Tocque- 
ville,  Mortimer-Ternanx,  Qiiinet  published  their  studies,  which 
were  by  no  means  blindly  enthusiastic.  The  influence  of 
the  ''Prophets  of  the  Past,"  Joseph  de  Maistre  especially, 
hitherto  limited  to  a  narrow  school,  became  a  factor  of  national 
importance.  Then  appeared  the  gigantic  and  virulent  arraign- 
ment of  the  Revolution  by  Taine,  which,  partial  and  unhistorical 
as  it  was,  was  effective  in  ruining  the  heroic  legend.  Victor 
Hugo's  Ninety-Three  is  perhaps  the  last  great  work  in  the  pure 
revolutionary  tradition.  The  centenary  of  1789  caused  a 
temporary  revival  of  the  old  feelings :  the  riots  which  inter- 
rupted the  performances  of  Sardou's  Thermidor  in  1891 
were  prompted  by  a  sort  of  fanaticism  which  was  not  simply 
political.  To  criticise  the  Revolution  was  a  sacrilege.  M. 
Clemenceau's  words,  "La  Revolution  est  un  bloc,"  expressed 
the  constant  principle  of  all  orthodoxies. 

The  principles  of  1789,  the  sombre  epic  of  1793,  formed, 
indeed,  a  sufficient  basis  for  a  religion — were  it  only  of  the 
Mohammedan  type.  France  had  in  these  souvenirs  an  ideal 
and  a  legend — a  legend  fertile  in  miracles.  All  the  efforts  of 
Carlyle  and  Taine  have  failed  to  disprove  the  fact  that  for 
a  few  years  France  was  in  very  truth  a  missionary  nation. 
Individuals  may  have  been  weak,  foolish,  cruel ;  lower  elements — 
vanity  and  greed — had  undoubtedly  their  share  in  the  success 
of  the  movement ;  it  might  have  been  better  for  the  world, 
and  in  particular  for  France,  if  the  ancient  regime  had  been 
slowly,  obscurely  reformed.  In  the  same  way  it  can  be  main- 
tained that  the  Reformation,  the  American  Revolution,  the  Civil 
War,  could  and  should  have  been  avoided.  Yet,  right  or  wrong, 
the  French  Revolution  had  its  ideal  side. 

Unfortunately,  the  revolutionary  legend  came  to  clash  with 
two  other  traditions,  which  prevented  it  from  becoming  unques- 
tionably national.  The  first  was  Royalism  associated  with 
Catholicism :  France  could  not  sacrifice  thirteen  centuries  of 
her  history  to  a  crisis  of  five  or  six  years,  and  the  attempted 
reconciliation  between  the  old  and  the  new  under  Louis-Philippe 
satisfied  neither  extreme.     The  second  was  Bonapartism,  which 

18 


274  FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

gradually  absorbed  all  the  military  glamour  of  those  wonderful 
twenty  years.  Until  1848  Bonapartism  and  the  Revolution 
worked  harmoniously  together  :  the  election  of  Louis-Napoleon 
by  the  Conservatives,  and  the  Coup  d'Etat  of  1851,  separated 
the  two  legends  and  weakened  them  both.  Gambetta,  in  1870, 
failed  to  renew  the  miracles  of  1792,  and  the  French  finally 
lost  faith  in  the  supernatural  virtue  of  their  Revolution. 

It  was  reserved  for  the  Third  Republic,  through  no  fault  oi 
its  own,  but  by  the  mere  fact  of  its  peaceable,  useful,  humdrum 
existence,  to  destroy  what  little  prestige  the  legend  still 
possessed.  The  Immortal  Principles  of  1789  are  taught  in 
every  school ;  the  bust  of  Marianne  has  replaced  everywhere 
that  of  Tiberius  Badinguet;  the  fatidic  words  Liberty, 
Equality,  Fraternity  adorn  the  pediment  of  all  public  build- 
ings ;  the  Tsar  of  Russia  listens,  bareheaded,  to  the  strains  of 
the  "  Marseillaise  "  ;  *  and  yet  the  Millennium  is  not  perceptibly 
nearer.  The  revolution  belongs  entirely  to  the  past ;  its  work 
is  done — some  of  it  has  to  be  undone  ;  it  has  no  message  for 
our  souls. 

But  the  revolutionary  spirit  survives.  Already  in  the  forties 
men  began  to  realise  the  discrepancy  between  the  principles,  the 
aspirations  of  1789  and  the  actual  results  of  the  movement. 
This  effort  towards  universal  justice  had  led  to  conquests,  with 
their  inevitable  consequence — military  despotism  ;  the  Rights  of 
Man  had  been  bartered  for  the  soldier's  servitude  and  barbaric 
glory ;  a  new  privileged  order,  the  capitalists,  had  replaced, 
without  any  great  advantage,  the  abolished  aristocracy.  Thus 
a  new  Revolution  came  to  be  dreamed  of,  a  Revolution  of 
which  the  first  was  but  a  prelude.  Humanitarianism  superseded 
patriotism  as  an  ideal,  and  Socialism  political  democracy. 
There,  again,  we  had  a  religion  rather  than  a  party.  The  rigid 
pseudo-science  of  the  Marxians,  the  violence  and  selfishness  of 
certain  labour  unions,  should  not  blind  us  to  the  spiritual 
grandeur  of  Socialism  at  its  best.  As  represented  by  Proudhon 
or  George  Sand,  it  stood  for  justice  and  love.  It  had  much  in 
common  with  early  Christianity  :  it  appealed  to  the  generous 
side  of  human  nature  ;  it  preached  service  and  sacrifice,  instead 

*  '•  Tremblez,  tyrans,  et  vous,  perfides  "  ('•  La  Marseillaise  "). 


CONCLUSION  275 

of  strife  and  greed.  It  was  apocalyptic  and  Utopian,  historians 
tell  us  with  a  sneer ;  therein  lay  the  secret  of  its  religious 
power.  It  promised  a  day  of  judgment  in  this  generation,  and 
a  new  Jerusalem. 

Socialism  is  only  one  of  the  aspects  of  Humanitarianism,  and 
insurrection  one  of  the  accidental  phases  of  Socialism,  but  the 
Conservatives  affected  to  make  no  difference  between  the  three. 
In  the  mind  of  M.  Thiers  "  Romanticism  and  the  Commune 
were  one."  The  violent  outbreaks  of  June,  1848,  and  1871, 
followed  by  crushing  defeats,  ruined  humanitarian  Socialism  for 
two  generations.  But  so  ferocious  was  the  repression  ordered 
by  Cavaignac  and  Thiers  that  it  assumed  the  character  of  a 
persecution  rather  than  of  measures  of  self-defence.  Thus  it 
strengthened  Socialism  for  future  revenge  by  giving  it  the 
consecration  of  martyrdom. 

Thus,  in  spite  of  errors  and  crimes,  not  inherent  in  its 
doctrine,  but  committed  in  its  name  and  too  severely  expiated, 
Humanitarianism  survives  to  the  present  day,  as  a  faith,  a  hope, 
a  discipline.  It  was  an  essential  part  of  the  religion  of  the 
great  Romanticists,  Hugo,  Lamartine,  George  Sand  ;  it  remains 
the  spiritual  backbone  of  France.  A  dozen  years  ago,  when  a 
great  moral  issue  was  placed  before  the  country,  when  the 
Catholics  seemed  to  think  only  of  material  order,  conservation, 
and  safety,  it  was  in  the  name  of  Humanitarianism  that  Zola 
led  his  great  crusade  for  truth  and  justice.  It  was  our  privilege 
to  attend  many  a  tumultuous  meeting  in  those  days ;  with  quiet 
courage  the  speakers — scholars,  scientists,  ministers,  anarchists, 
for  all  were  welcome  to  their  share  of  honour  and  danger — were 
facing  obloquy,  ostracism,  and  even  death ;  no  elaborate  High 
Mass  in  an  ancient  cathedral,  no  revivalist  meeting  of  the  most 
successful  evangelist,  has  ever  given  us  a  deeper  feeling  of 
what  religion  should  be.* 

•  We  could  emphatically  endorse  the  following  lines:  "  C'est  par 
rA5aire  [Dreyfus]  que  les  hommes  de  notre  g^n^ration  ont  communis  pour 
la  premiere  fois  dans  I'Humanit^,  Pour  nous,  elle  a  et6,  et  elle  demeure, 
une  religion.  Toute  notre  vie,  nous  portcrons  au  front  gloricuscment  ce 
baptcme  d'outrages  et  de  larmes.  A  ce  signe,  nous  jjoas  reconnaitrons  "-  - 
Paul  Hyacinthe  Loyson,  Les  Droita  de  VHnmmp,  weekly,  November  13, 
1910.     (P.  H.  Loysuu  is  tlie  son  of  the  ^rca^  pii-.i'o.ur.) 


276      FRENCH   PROPHETS   OF   YESTERDAY 

So  evident  was  the  religious  character  of  Humanitarianism  at 
that  time,  that  a  curious  attempt  was  made  to  give  it  a  ritual. 
A  former  priest,  Victor  Charbonnel,  organised  several  services, 
which,  owing  to  his  ecclesiastical  experience  and  to  the 
enthusiasm  of  the  public,  were  undoubtedly  successful.  Songs, 
readings,  recitations,  addresses,  composed  the  programme. 
Hugo,  Michelet,  Zola,  Anatole  France,  were  the  Fathers  of  the 
new  Church.  We  remember  a  ''  Human  Christmas,"  a 
"Festival  of  Reason."  The  hero  of  the  latter  occasion  was 
Marcellin  Berthelot — surely  a  better  personification  of  the 
goddess  than  Citizeness  Momoro !  The  speech  of  the  veteran 
scientist  was  listened  to  with  a  degree  of  reverent  eagerness  not 
always  granted  to  sermons. 

But  as  moral  order  was  restored  this  fine  enthusiasm  fell. 
Humanitarianism  is  a  spiritual  reserve  in  case  of  national  emer- 
gency ;  it  is  not  a  faith  for  the  daily  needs  of  the  individual. 
As  a  religion,  its  weaknesses  are  many.     It  is  based  on  a  series 
of  optimistic  assumptions — the   innate   goodness  of  man,  the 
veracity  of  human  reason,  the  reality  and  constancy  of  progress, 
the  possibility  of  immediate  and  radical  improvements — assump- 
tions which,  alas !  are  difl&cult  to  maintain  in  the  teeth  of  expe- 
rience.    Then  it  cannot  abandon  its  ideal,   its  myth  as  Sorel 
would  say,  of  a  revolution  ever  at  hand,  through  which  the  old 
order  will  give  place  to  the  new ;  if  it  did  give  up  that  apoca- 
lyptic hope,  it  would  lose  its  romantic  and  spiritual  appeal,  and 
sink  to  the  level  of  a  mere  philosophy  and  of  a  party.    The  early 
Christians  too  expected  a  great  revolution  and  the  destruction 
of  the  ancient  world.     But  they  were  passive;  they  had  but  to* 
watch  and  pray,  and  wait  for  the  second  coming.     The  modern 
Millenarian  feels  bound  to  hasten  the  consummation  he  hopes 
for.     In  this  he  is  comparable,  not  with  the  Christians  but  with 
the  Jews  of  the  first  and  second  centuries — haunted  with  Mes- 
sianic dreams,   rushing  into  mad  rebellions,  which  invariably 
ended  in  defeat  and  massacre.     Even  with  the  noblest  inten- 
tions apocalyptic  Socialism  is  a  danger,  and  if  Socialism  is  not 
apocalyptic  it  ceases  to  be  a  religion. 

The  worst  weakness  is  on  the  doctrinal  side.     The  movement, 
strong  both  materially  and  sentimentally,  has  not  yet  been  able 


CONCLUSION  277 

to  constitute  its  theology.  It  wavers  between  agnosticism,  theism, 
antitheism,  atheism,  and  pantheism.  One  of  its  theories  could 
serve  as  a  fundamental  dogma  :  Mankind,  in  its  totality,  is  the 
Incarnation,  the  superior  Being  of  whom  we  all  are  members,  in 
whom  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being.  This,  propounded 
by  Comte,  could  easily  be  reconciled  with  a  scientific  view  of  the 
world,  with  Hegelianism,  and  with  the  extreme  developments  of 
liberal  Christianity.*  But  this  dogma  lacks  authority — not 
only  the  supernatural  authority  of  Divine  revelation  but  the 
human  authority  of  evidence  and  common  acceptance.  To  the 
scientist  it  is  nothing  but  an  attractive  and  poetic  hypothesis, 
without  any  bearing  on  the  facts  of  nature,  and  receiving  no 
support  from  them.     To  the  popular  mind  it  is  meaningless. 

Potent  still  is  the  appeal  of  Humanitarianism,  in  that  it  seems 
to  imply  faith,  hope,  and  charity  ;  yet,  weak  except  in  times  of 
crisis,  dangerous  because  it  fosters  dreams  of  upheaval  and  con- 
flagration, unsatisfactory  for  the  intellect,  it  cannot  be  the  sole 
religion  of  the  future :  but  it  will  more  and  more  be  recognised 
as  one  of  its  essential  elements. 

The  latest  idol,  in  the  words  of  de  Curel,  is  Science.  Strada, 
the  crack-brained  epic  poet,  turned  his  residence  into  a  Temple 
of  the  Religion  of  Science.  Many  a  saner  or  more  common- 
place man  did  the  same  in  his  heart.  Indeed,  when  Brnnetiere 
dared  to  proclaim  that,  as  a  religion,  science  was  bankrupt, 
loud  was  the  outcry  against  the  "obscurantist." 

Who  loves  not  Knowledge?  Who  shall  rail  against  her 
beauty?  But  science  is  still  the  privilege  of  a  few,  and  it 
only  helps  these  few  to  fathom  their  ignorance.  In  Sainte- 
Beuve's  words,  it  is  "  a  flickering  torch  in  the  midst  of  bound- 
less night."  Even  within  that  narrow  circle  of  trembling  light 
it  has  no  moral  authority,  no  spiritual  significance.  A  life  ruled 
according  to  science  alone,  if  that  were  possible,  would  be  a 
life  of  enlightened  selfishness.  A  man  may  know  intellectually 
which  is  the  right  course,  and  find  in  that  knowledge  no  assist- 
ance against  temptation.  Learned  physicians  have  fallen  victims 
to  the  drink  habit,  and  investigations  in  arteriosclerosis  did  not 
cure  them.  Whenever  the  interest  of  the  individual  clashes 
*  Rev.  R.  J.  Campbell's  New  Theology. 


278      FRENCH  PROPHETS  OF  YESTERDAY 

with  that  of  the  race,  by  what  authority  will  science  demand 
self-sacrifice?  Useless  for  the  ignorant,  the  weak,  the  selfish, 
the  religion  of  science  has  nobler  opponents — the  sentimentalists, 
the  idealists,  the  mystics,  who  will  not  accept  the  laws  of  physical 
nature  as  their  spiritual  rule.  **  But  these  laws,  if  you  disregard 
them,  will  infallibly  crush  you !  "  What  matters  it  7  They  may 
destroy,  they  cannot  save.  Pascal  and  Vigny  have  taught  us 
that  a  single  soul  is  more  than  the  material  universe.  The 
theology  of  the  new  religion  will  have  to  take  science  into 
account :  an  astronomy,  a  geology,  a  history  contrary  to  ascer- 
tained facts  can  no  longer  be  defended  on  the  plea  that  they  are 
sacred.  In  the  same  way  the  new  ritual  cannot  afford  to  ignore 
hygiene  and  sociology.  Medicine  will  enlarge  its  field  at  the 
expense  of  thaumaturgy.  Many  moral  precepts  will  perhaps 
receive  a  scientific  formula.  Science  will  thus  become  a  useful 
ally  for  religion,  rather  than  a  substitute ;  for  "  she  is  the 
second,  not  the  first ;  she  cannot  fight  the  fear  of  death ;  for 
she  is  earthly  of  the  mind,  but  Wisdom  heavenly  of  the  soul." 

3.  Supernaturalism  and  Naturalism. 

Such  were  the  terms  of  the  problem  which  France  had  to 
face  at  the  fall  of  the  Empire ;  supernatural  religion,  in  spite 
of  the  material  power  of  the  Church,  was  steadily  losing  ground  ; 
no  form  of  natural  religion  could  aspire  to  spiritual  hegemony. 
After  forty  years  the  conditions  are  substantially  the  same :  the 
old  is  weaker,  the  new  not  stronger;  no  authority  has  risen 
from  the  ruins. 

When  we  deal  with  supernatural  religion  from  its  own  point 
of  view  we  cannot  affirm  anything  about  the  future.  The  future 
is  not  in  human  hands ;  we  must  reserve  the  possibility  of  a 
miracle.  Either  historical  Christianity  may  revive  in  France, 
or  a  new  revelation  be  the  foundation  of  a  new  faith.  But 
nothing  short  of  a  miracle  can  effect  it. 

If  the  evolution  of  French  thought  continues  unchecked,  the 
place  held  hitherto  by  orthodox  religion  will  be  filled  by  humani- 
tarian Socialism,  both  sentimental  and  practical :  by  science 
in  the  intellectual  field,  by  Agnosticism  in  the  metaphysical. 
Perhaps   we    shall    have   the    '*  ethics    without   obligation    or 


CONCLUSION  279 

sanction "  outlined  by  Guyau.  In  such  a  case  the  future  of 
religion  would  amount  to  the  "  irreligion  of  the  future,"* 

If  this  came  to  pass,  would  a  great  gloom  fall  over  the  world  ? 
Would  the  horror  and  despair  which  filled  Scherer  and  Mme. 
Ackermann  become  a  universal  experience  ?  Perhaps  not.  The 
nobler  souls  alone,  at  any  rate,  would  suffer :  most  men  live 
comfortably  without  metaphysical  beliefs  at  present.  The 
struggle  in  which  Renan  and  Scherer  lost  their  faith  in  the 
absolute  was  exceedingly  painful  :  yet  both  survived  the  ordeal, 
and  lived  usefully  and  happily  for  many  years.  Perhaps  one 
generation  has  suffered  for  all :  the  second  **  mal  du  siecle,"  the 
melancholy  which  heralded  the  coming  of  relativism,  may  have 
been  a  crisis  in  the  growth  of  the  race  which  will  not  occur 
again. 

Religion  is  immortal  within  the  individual  soul.  What  falls 
under  our  notice  is  not  its  spiritual  essence,  bat  its  intellectual, 
social,  moral  effects.  We  could  afford  to  let  theologies  and 
Churches  pass  away,  if  the  love  of  goodness  and  truth  were  to 
remain  intact. 

The  supreme  question,  therefore,  is  this :  Is  the  religion  of 
the  ideal  bound  up  with  any  particular  tradition,  any  metaphysical 
system,  any  ecclesiastical  form?  In  other  words,  has  mankind 
the  means  of  salvation  everywhere  and  at  all  times  within  itself, 
or  is  it  doomed  to  perdition  unless,  abdicating  its  spiritual 
autonomy,  it  receives  miraculous  aid  from  above  ?  So  we  are 
finally  confronted  with  the  irreducible  antinomy  :  naturalism  and 
supernaturalism. 

"  The  progress  of  this  world  may  be  irregular  and  slow,"  says 
the  naturalist,  *'  but  it  is  certain.  Our  age  of  tolerance  and 
scepticism  is  not  morally  degenerate.  Science,  free-thought, 
humanity,  have  their  saints,  their  heroes,  their  martyrs.  Any 
Church  would  be  proud  of  men  like  Michelet,  Quinet,  Taine, 
Renan,  Littr6.  A  spirit  of  gentleness,  of  fraternity  and  lustice, 
is  growing  fast,  and  faster  among  the  unbelievers  than  among  the 
orthodox.  Priests  denounce  the  peace  movement,  whose  most 
ardent  advocates  are  agnostics,  t     The  apostle  of  universal  con- 

•  M,  J.  Guyau,  Essai  d'une  Morale  sans  obligation  ni  sa^nction — L'IrrHigion 
ds  VAvenir.  t  In  France. 


280      FRENCH  PROPHETS   OF  YESTERDAY 

cord  through  a  world-language,  Christ-like  in  his  disinterested 
devotion  to  the  ideal,  is  an  emancipated  Jew.  Our  democracy  of 
infidels  is  governed  by  men  who,  with  all  their  frailties,  are 
better  than  Abraham,  Jehovah's  friend.  Our  colonial  wars  are 
models  of  scrupulous  humanity  compared  with  the  heaven-led 
conquest  of  the  Promised  Land.  Our  worst  act  of  intolerance, 
the  expulsion  of  a  few  nuns,  is  a  venial  sin  compared  with  the 
Inquisition.  Our  efforts  for  righting  social  wrongs  are  as 
beautiful  as  and  more  enlightened  than  all  the  foundations  of 
monastic  charity.  Our  search  for  truth,  in  unknown  continents, 
in  libraries  and  laboratories,  is  more  modest,  more  patient,  more 
heroic,  more  fruitful,  than  the  baseless  elucubrations  of  all  the 
theologians.  We  no  longer  believe  in  the  absolute  goodness  of 
human  nature,  in  the  possibility  of  its  sudden  regeneration  :  man 
is  late  risen  from  animality.  But,  urged  by  a  universal  instinct, 
with  reason  as  his  sole  guide,  he  slowly  betters  the  world  and 
himself." 

''It  is  true,"  replies  the  supernaturalist,  "that  the  fruits  of 
unbelief  are  not  immediately  seen  :  I  will  not  bring  up  against 
you  symptoms  in  your  country  which  seem  ominous  enough  even 
to  sympathetic  observers.  The  leading  nations  of  the  world  are 
predominantly  Christian,  and  you  dare  not  fall  too  far  behind 
them  ;  although  less  assertive  than  their  rivals,  the  Catholics 
are  still  a  majority  in  France ;  besides,  the  good  habits  of 
eighteen  centuries  are  not  lost  in  one  or  two  generations.  But 
the  virtue  of  the  natural  man,  without  heavenly  assistance,  is 
singularly  precarious.  Without  faith,  stoic  despair  or  refined 
Epicureanism  are  your  only  alternatives  :  Taine  chose  the  first, 
Renan  the  second.  All  your  boasted  love  for  justice  and  reason, 
which  you  take  to  be  the  dawn  of  a  better  day,  is  but  the  after- 
glow of  your  setting  faith.  Listen  to  the  words  of  your  greatest 
apostle  :  '  At  first  sight,  humanity  in  our  days  is  driven  to  a 
position  whence  there  is  no  escape.  The  old  beliefs  through 
which  man  was  helped  in  practising  virtue  are  shaken,  and  have 
not  been  replaced.  For  ourselves,  cultivated  minds,  the  equiva- 
lent for  these  beliefs  offered  by  idealism,  are  quite  sufficient ;  for 
we  act  under  the  empire  of  ancient  customs ;  we  are  like  those 
animals  whose  brains  have  been  removed  by  physiologists,  and 


CONCLUSION  281 

which  continue  none  the  less  to  perform  certain  vital  functions,  as 
the  effect  of  habit.  But  these  instinctive  movements  will  grow 
weaker  and  weaker  with  time.  To  do  good  in  order  that  God,  if 
He  exists,  may  be  pleased  with  us,  will  seem  to  many  an  empty 
formula.  The  faith  we  live  by  is  but  the  shadow  of  a  shadow  ; 
what  shall  they  live  by  that  come  after  us  ?  '  "  * 

Shall  we  thus  close  this  review  on  a  discord?  Irreducible 
indeed  seem  the  two  voices  which  alternate,  eternally,  in  every 
nation,  perhaps  in  every  heart.  Yet  what  arc  they  but  efforts — 
human  efforts,  and  therefore  hopelessly  inadequate — to  express 
the  same  aspirations  ?  Supernaturalism  is  the  poetry,  naturalism 
the  prose  of  spiritual  life  :  shall  we  condemn  all  poets  as  non- 
sensical sentimentalists,  all  prose  writers  as  commonplace 
drivellers  ?  Are  not  all  needed  in  the  universal  choir  ?  Under 
many  names,  in  unlikely  places,  we  have  found  "morality — and 
metaphysics — touched  with  emotion."  Whether  in  the  unutter- 
able ecstasy  of  the  mystic,  in  the  blindly  accepted  orthodoxy  of 
the  traditionalist,  in  the  pomps  of  the  ritualist,  in  the  social 
devotion  of  the  humanitarian,  in  the  patient  and  lonely  labour  of 
the  scientist,  wherever  there  is  passionate  longing  for  infinite 
goodness  and  truth,  wherever  there  are  lives  transformed  and 
upheld  by  the  thought  of  eternal  things,  sectarian  names  and 
formal  creeds  matter  little  :  there  is  religion  : — 

*'  Our  little  systems  have  their  day  ; 

They  have  their  day,  and  cease  to  be  : 
They  are  but  broken  lights  of  Thee, 
And  Thou,  0  Lord,  art  more  than  they." 


*  Renan,  Dialogiies  Philosophiqiies,  Preface,  xix.  It  is  true  that  Renangoes 
on  to  say :  ' '  Mankind  will  ever  be  able  to  evolve  the  amount  of  illusion 
necessary  to  its  spiritual  needs."  But  is  not  this  a  bare  affirmation  ?  And  if 
our  hopes  are  indeed  naught  but  an  illusion,  will  there  not  bean  ever-increas- 
ing number  of  men  to  see  through  it  ?  "  What  shall  they  live  by  that  come 
after  us?  " 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 

Main  Sources. 

Political  History. 

There  is  no  handy  and  scientific  history  of  the  period  in  French  or  in 
English. 

Taxile  Delord  :  Histoire  du  Second  Empire  (Bailliere  [Alcan],  1868-75,  6 
vols.,  Svo)  is  journalistic  in  thought  and  style,  but  valuable  as  a  con- 
temporary document.  The  same  is  true  of  Larousse's  Grand  Dictionnaire 
Universel.  The  difference  between  the  volumes  published  before  and 
after  1870  is  striking,  and  not  seldom  amusing.  (Gf.  Bonaparte  and 
Napoleon.) 

P.  DE  LA  Gorge  :  Histoire  de  la  Seconde  Bdpublique  (Plon,  2  vols.,  8vo,  1887) 
and  Histoire  du  Second  Empire  (Plon,  7  vols.,  8vo,  1894-1905).  Some- 
what diSuse,  strong  conservative  bias,  but  full,  conscientious,  and  readable. 

Emile  Ollivier  :  L' Empire  Liberal  (Garnier,  1894).  Most  of  the  chapters 
appeared  in  the  Bevue  des  Deux  Mondes.  A  personal  apology,  unreliable, 
but  of  commanding  interest. 

A.  Thomas  :  Histoire  Socialiste  ;  Le  Second  Empire  (Rouff).  Although  it  is 
part  of  a  popular  and  partisan  series,  this  is  an  excellent  piece  of  work. 

T.  Delord  and  A.  Thomas  are  illustrated.  For  pictorial  documentation  in 
convenient  form,  A.  Dayot,  UHistoire  de  France  par  Vlmage^  Le  Second 
Empire. 

Literary  History. 

Of.  H.  P.  Thieme  :  Guide  bibliographique  de  la  littirature  frangaise  de  1800  a 
1906  (Paris,  Welter,  1907,  8vo).     Indispensable. 

Among  the  few  omissions  of  special  importance  to  our  subject :  X.  Doudan, 
A.  Lefevre,  Strada  (Delarue),  Octave  Feuillet's  Sibylle,  1862. 

Religious  History. 

A.  Debidour  :  Histoire  des  rapports  de  VEglise  et  de  Vitat  en  France  de  1789  d 
1870  (Alcan,  1898,  Svo).  Convenient  collection  of  facts,  useful  biblio- 
graphies, marred  by  polemical  tone. 

^62 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE  283 

Salomon  Reinach  :  Orpheus  (Picard,  Paris ;  Heinemann,  London ;  Putnam, 
Nevr  York,  1909).     Lucid  summary.     Bibliographies— Voltairian  in  tone. 

G.  Weill  :  Le  Catholicisme  Franrais  au  XlX^me  sUcle,  extrait  de  la  Revue  de 
Synthase  historique,  December,  1907.     Excellent  general  indications. 

The  author  wishes  to  thank  Professors  Gustavo  Lanson  and  Charles 
Seignobos,  of  the  Sorbonne,  Paris,  for  helpful  suggestions  offered  in  private 
conversations  during  the  summer  of  1910. 


INDEX   OF   PERSONAL   NAMES 


Small  capitals  indicate  the  authors  whose  works  were  puhlished  or  written 
between  1848  and  1870,  and  had  a  hearmg  on  religious  thought.  The 
pages  wliere  tliey  are  more  particularly  studied  are  indicated  by  heavier 
figures. 


About,  Edmond,  107,  108 
AcKERMANN,   Mme.    Louise,   22,   90, 

161,  181,  191,  195,  258-9,  279 
Ackermann,  Paul,  174 
^schylus,  64 
Aguettant,  67 
Alembert  (d'),  216 
Allier,  247 

Amiel,  Henri-FredMc,  22,  212,  247 
Antonelli,  Cardinal,  55 
Aristotle,  61 
Arnold,  Matthew,  143 
Aubigne,  Merle  d',  26,  85 
AuGiER,  Emile,  25,  44,  69,  107,  160, 

256 
Augustine,  Saint,  61,  63,  184 
Aulard,  A.,  267 

Babbitt,  Irving,  255 

Bacon,  Francis,  60,  165 

Ballanche,  Pierre,  124 

Balzac,  H.  de,  36 

Banville,  Theodore  de,  180,  192 

Barb^s,  129 

Barbey  d'Aurevilly,  J.,  12,  25,  27, 

28,  34,  36-45,  45,  53,  63,  104 
Barrault,  130,  167,  269 
Barres,  M.,  255 
Baudelaire,  Ch.,  12,  34,  35,  36-43, 

44,  174,  180,  197,  200 
Baunard,  Mgr.,  26 
Bautain,  Abb6,  59,  229 
Bayle,  P.,  216 
Bazard,  269 

Beranger,  25,  109,  201,  242,  270 
Bernard,  Claude,  165,  214,  256 
Berryer,  25 
Berthelot,  M.,  147,  165,  213,  214, 

231,  241,  250,  254,  256,  276 
Beyle,  H.,  109,  110 


Bir6,  E.,  141,  150,  213 

Blanc,  Louis,  95,  129,  145,  272 

Blanc-Saint-Bonnet,  26 

Blanqui,  31,  129 

Bloy,  Leon,  28,  43,  63,  68 

Bois,  Jules,  269 

Bonald,  de,  167 

Bonjean,  29 

Bossuet,  29,  44,  45,  48,  61,  70,  83, 93, 

184,  258 
Bouilhet,  L.,  181 
Bourget,  P.,  13,255 
Brizeux,  34 

Broglie,  A.  de,  51,  54,  69 
Brunetiere,  P.,  25,  26,  60,  229,  277 
Buisson,  F,,  74 
Buloz,  F.,  239 
Bungener,  F.,  72 
Burckhardt,  259 
Burke,  52 
Byron,  35,  36,  108,  174,  187 

Cabet,  129 

Calvin,  10,  75,  79,  135,  138,  160 

Campbell,  R.  J.,  177,  277 

Carlyle,  213,  239,  273 

Carnot,  269 

Card,  E.,  22,  106,  213 

Cavaignac,  129,  275 

Cavour,  51 

Challemel-Lacour,  161 

Channing,  97 

Charbonnel,  Victor,  276 

Charlemagne,  123 

Charles  X.,  125,  203,  261  . 

Chateaubriand,   29,  34-8,  41-4,  109, 

122,  149,  164,  189,  209,  214,  218, 

225,  233,  256,  266,  268 
Chatel,  Abbd,  268 
Chaumette,  267 


284 


INDEX   OF  PERSONAL  NAMES 


285 


Chevallier,  Michel,  168,  269 

Childe,  Mrs.,  114 

Cicero,  271 

Cl^menceau,  G.,  9,  273 

Clovis,  IG,  32 

Cochin,  A.,  29,  51 

Coignet,  71 

CoLANi,  72,  76-7 

Colenso,  87 

Coligny,  10,  2G0 

Combes,  10 

CoMTE,    Auguste,    16-18,    21-2,    88, 

104,  146,  166-71,  175,  181,  212-13, 

225,  251,  266,  269,  270 
Condillac,  215-16 
Considerant,  129 
Constantine,  16 
Cook,  71 
CoQUEREL,   Athanase,    Jr.,    72,    77, 

82-3 
Corneille,  220 
Coulanges,  93,  106,  127 
Cousin,  Victor,  20,  60,  146,  163,  201, 

216,  271 
Creuzer,  98,  165 
Curel,  277 

Danton,  147 

Darwin,     Ch.     (translated     by     C. 

Royer),   12,   16-17,  104,  146,  165, 

181,  186,  214 
Descartes,   162,    165,   184,   189,  220, 

232,  251,  256 
Diderot,  107,  216,  219 
Didon,  Father,  238 
Dollinger,  62 

DouDAN,  X.,  44,  104,  106,  109 
Doumic,  25-6 
Douniol,  63 

Dreyfus  Case,  189,  255,  275 
Du  Camp,  Maxime,  270 
Duchesne,  Mgr.,  264 
Dumas,  A.  (the  father),  37,  193 
Dumas,  A.  (the  son),  160,  199,  256 
Dumas,  Georges,  171 
DuPANLOUP,   Mgr.,    22,    28,   33,   47, 

51-7,  59,  120,  163.  172,  201,  204, 

213,  227,  228,  257 
Dupuis,  165,  216 
DUBUY,  V.,201     - 
Duvergier  de  Hauranne,  104 

Eliot,  G.,  235,  259 

Emerson,  97 

Enfantin,   Father    P.,    167-8,    269, 

270 
Epicurus,  208 


Esquirol,  220 

Eugenie,  the  Empress,  17,  110,  241 

Faguet,  E.,  25-6,  106 

Falloux,  de,  28,  51-2,  54-5 

Felix,  Father,  27 

Fenelon,  48,  61,  184 

Ferry,  J.,  9 

Feurbach,  243,  253 

Fovre,  Mgr. ,  59 

Flaubert,  G.,  39,  103,  108,  160,  164, 

252,  256 
Foisset,  Th.,  51 
Fourrier,  125 

France,  A.,  171,  174,  255,  276 
Francis,  St.,  136 
Franklin,  B.,  271 
Fr^ret,  216 

Gambetta,  L.,  9,  274 

Garibaldi,  114 

Garnier-Pages,  145 

Gasparin,  A.  de,  72,  76 

Gaussen,  84 

Gautier,  Th.,  36,  37,  180,  191-2,  233 

G6nin,  127 

Gerson,  70 

Gibbon,  79 

Gobineau,  de,  230 

Goethe,  15,  40,  174,  218-19,  221 

Goncourt,  E.  and  J.,  160,  250 

Goroni,  Father,  26 

Gottofrey,  Abb6,  229 

Grant  Duff,  Sir  Mount  Stuart,  235 

Gratry,  Father,  19,  22,  25,  28,  51, 

56-60,    62-5-8-9,    160,    163,    182, 

236,  257,  262 
Gr^ard,  86,  90 
Gregory  IV.,  54 
Gregory  VII.,  54 
Gregory  XVI.,  50,  53 
Gu6roult,  168,  269 
GuizoT,  F.,  30,  72,  77,  78-83,  84,  92, 

164,  171,  210,  257,  259 
Guyau,  M.  J.,  279 

Harrison,  F.,  270 

Hartmann,  161 

Haussonville,  0.  d',  207 

Ha  VET,  E.,  61,  217,  219,  236 

Hegel,  90,  163,  176,  216,  219 

Heine,  127 

Hello,  E.,  22,  25,  28,  63-8,  69,  163, 

225,  236 
Henri  IV.,  260 
Herder,  131,  164 
Hoffmann,  36 
Holbach,  215 


286 


INDEX   OF  PERSONAL  NAMES 


Homais,  103,  271 

Homer,  42,  64,  114 

Hugo,  V.,  17,  19,  20,  25,  34,  44,  48, 
62,  65,  67,  69,  93-4,  114-5-8-9, 
124-9,  131-5-8,  141-58,  160,  175, 
180-2-6,  192-3,  207,  212-19,  247, 
256,  257,  273-5-6 

Hume,  209 

Huxley,  12 

Huysmans,  12,  27,  43,  67-8 

James,  William,  221,  229 
Janet,  P.,  22,  81 
Jouffroy,  85,  90,  213 
Julian  (Emperor),  259 
Julleville,  26 

Kant,  I.,  20,  243 
Kardec,  Allan,  107 

Laboulaye,  E. ,  72 

Labruyere,  48 

Lachatre,  M.,  107 

Lacordaire,  H.,   19,   25-6-7-8,   30, 

41,  50-1-3-6,  62,  67-9,  201-4,  262 
Laffitte,  P.,  270 
Lafontaine,  178,  208 
La  Hire,  230 

Labor,  J.  (Dr.  Cazalis),  181,  191 
Lamartine,  a.  de,  19,  20,  21,  34,  51, 

69,  93,  118,  126,  129,  130,  145,  151, 

171,  180,  186,  227,  272,  275 
Lamennais,  F.  de,  32,  50,  62,  64,  67, 

93,   124,   126,   127,   129,  130,  145, 

167,  180,  201,  225,  229,  231,  254, 

262 
Lamettrie,  215 
Lanfrey,  107 
Lanson,  25 
Laplace,  162 

Laprade,  V.  de,  25,  34,  204 
La  R^veillere-Lepeaux,  268 
Larochejacquelein,  Mme.  de,  111 
Larousse,  107 
Lasserre,  119 
Latreille,  32 
Leconte  de  Lisle,  22,  26,  34,  69, 

90,  163,  164,  174,  175,  181,  191-200, 

220,  232,  256,  258,  266 
Ledru-Rollin,  145,  146 
Lefebvre  d'Etaples,  70 
Lef^vre,  A.,  181 
Leibnitz,  60,  61 
Lemaitre,  J.,  25,  26,  27,  90,  91,  199, 

255 
Leo  Xni.,  33,  57,  262 
Leopardi,  194 


Leroux,  p.,  62,  125,  128-30,167, 180, 

269 
Leverrier,  165 
Levy-Bruhl,  171 
Libri,  127 
Littre,  E.,  12,  15,  16,   22,  61,  81, 

146,  147,  165,  166-T2,  200,  201,  204, 

213,  214,  216,  251,  256,  270,  279 
Loader,  Eev.  Th.,  84 
Loisy,  262 
Lombroso,  C,  64 
Longhaye,  Father,  26,  46 
Louis  IX.— Saint  Louis,  82, 123 
Louis  XIV.,  71,  135 
Louis  XVI.,  71,  79 
Louis  XVIII.,  123 
Louis-Philippe,  32.  78,  106,  111,  124, 

126,  128,  182,  203,  268 
Loyola,  16 
LoYSON,  Father  Hyacinthe,  27,  31, 

36,  39,  62,  68,  262,  268,  275 
Loyson,  Paul-Hyacinthe,  275 
Lucretius,  174,  208 
Luther,  58,  70,  75,  135,  138 
Lyell,  166 

Maeterlinck,  43,  68 

Maine  de  Biran,  213 

Maistre,  Joseph  de,  26,  29,  32,  33,  42, 

43,   45,  50,  53,  58,  124,  127,  167, 

201    227    273 
Malebranche,  61,  228,  229,  232,  251, 

253,  256 
Mame,  63 
Mapah,  268 

Marcus  Aurelius,  16,  90,  99,  222 
Maret,  Mgr.,  56,  66-9,  68,  264 
Marx,  Karl,  172,  173 
Mathieu,  Mgr.,  175,  179 
Maunoir,  Camilla,  183 
Maury,  Alfred,  201 
Mazzini,  31,  120 
Menard,  Louis,  181 
Merim^e,     p.,     37,     69,     97,     104, 

109-117,   141,    175,  202,  235,   236, 

239,  246 
Metternich,  30 
Michelet,  12,  19,  20,  21,  25,  34,  36, 

62,  69,  93,  95,  98,  118,   127,  129- 

41,    145,    151,    160,   212,   216,  218, 

227,  228,  238,  239,  252,  256,  266, 

271,  272,  276,  279 
Mill,  J.  S.,  171,  216,219,251 
Milton,  35 
Moliere,  48,  208,  216 
Mommsen,  237,  239 
Momoro,  Mme. ,  276 
Monod,  Frederic,  72,  76 


INDEX  OF  PERSONAL  NAMES 


287 


Monod,  Gabriel,  72,  141 
Montaigne,  115,  163,  206,  208,  209, 

210,  225,  246,  256,  262 
MONTALEMBERT,   22,    25,    28,  30,  31, 

33,  34,  44,  51-6,  68,  69,  87 
Montesquieu,  135 
Morley,  12,  101 
Morny,  de,  169 

Mortimer-Ternaux,  95,  118,  273 
Musset,  158,  180,  183,  208 

Nanteuil,  Celestin,  118 

Napoleon  I.,  109,  122,  141 

Napoleon  III. — Louis  Napoleon,  16, 
31,  44,  49,  52,  56,  58,  111,  120, 
129,  130,  148,  168,  181,  203,  204, 
242,  257,  261,  267,  268,  274 

Napoleon,  Prince,  107,  108,  111 

Newman,  58 

Newton,  162 

Niebuhr,  239 

Nisard,  119 

Olier,  228 

Ollivier,  Emile,  17,  53 

Ozanam,  29 

Panizzi,  110 

Parigot,  H.,226 

Pascal,  29,  45,  60,  61,  68,  185,  187, 

189,  206,  209,  278 
Passy,  Frederic,  72 
Pasteur,  166,  171,  214,  219,  266 
Paul,  Saint,  208,  242 
Paulsen,  Friedrich,  240 
Paulus,  239 

Peladan,  Sar  Jos^phin,  269 
Pelletan,  E.,  73,  131 
Persigny,  de,  215 
Petau,  61 
Peyrat,  95 
Pie,  Mgr.,  58 
Pierreclos,  Mme.  de,  171 
Pius  IX.,  17,  30,  31,  32,  33,  47,  53, 

56,  68,  256,  262 
PiusX.,  262 
Plato,  61,  64,  271 
Pompadour,  Mme.  de,  102 
Ponsard,  F.,  118 
Pontmartin,  A.  de,  103 
Poree,  102 
Poussielgue,  63 
Pboudhon,   p. -J.,   31,  49,    90,    129, 

133,  150,  172-9,  215,  236,  254,  257, 

266,  274 

Quatrem^re  de  Quincy,  239 
QuixNET,  E.,  12,  20,    kS,   09,   72,  92- 
100,  118,  127,  129,  130,  131,  135, 


138,  145,  160,  164,  165,  252,  256, 
267,  273,  279 

Rabelais,  138,  207,  216,  219 

llachel,  118 

Racine,  220 

Ranke,  239 

Raspail,  114,  145 

Ravignan,  27 

Reboul,  34 

Remusat,  A.  de,  119 

Renan,  E.,  12,  17,  19,  22,  34,  58,  59, 
61,  64,  67,  69,  72,  77,  84,  86,  90, 
91,  93,  99,  104,  107,  108,  147,  150, 
162,  163,  164,  105,  171.  172,  174, 
201,  204,  212,  222,  226-55,  259,  264, 
266,  269,  279,  280 

Renan,  Henriette,  226,  228,  230,  234, 
243 

Renan,  Mme.,  242 

Renouvier,  C,  212 

Reuss,  72,  76,  84 

R^ville,  72 

Reybaud,  L.,  268 

Reynaud,  J.,  61, 125, 129, 154, 214, 251 

Ricbelieu,  71 

Ricbepin,  197 

Robespierre,  95,  207 

Robin,  108 

Rodriguez,  Olinde,  269 

RoUinat,  M.,  43 

Rosalie,  Sister,  29 

Rossi,  30 

Rostand,  72 

Rotbschild,  237 

Rousseau,  J. -J.,  20,  21,  79,  90,  107, 
120,  121,  135,  220,  270 

Roussel,  Rev.  Napoleon,  113 

Royer,  Clemence,  166 

Royer-Collard,  213 

Ruysbroek,  66 

Sabatier,  72 

Sacy,  Silvestre  de,  233 

Sainte-Beuve,  15,  22,  27,  37,  39,  40, 
41,  44,  53,  69,  107,  108,  111,  114, 
160,  163,  164,  165,  168,  171,  201- 
12,  215,  223,  226,  236,  239,  247, 
252,  256,  257,  259,  206,  269,  277 

Saint-Martin,  90 

Saint-Simon,  Due  de,  26 

Saint-Simon,  Henri,  44, 125, 129, 166- 
72  269 

Sand,  George,  62,  69,  97,  107,  118, 
120,  127,  128,  129,  130,  131,  138, 
145,  151,  160,  168,  169,  236,  241, 
256,  268,  274-5 

Sand,  Maurice,  97 


288 


INDEX   OF  PERSONAL  NAMES 


Sandeau,  J.,  182 

Sangnier,  M.,  262 

Sardou,  V.,  273 

ScHERER,    44,  47,  72,  76,  77,  83-92, 

100,  150,  163,  164,  172,  201,  213, 

236,  256,  257,  259,  279 
Schneider,  169 
Schopenhauer,  161,  175,  194 
Scott,  Walter,  192 
Seailles,  G.,  226 
S^ch6,  I.,  183 
Secretan,  72 

Shakespeare,  65,  197,  220 
Shelley,  174 

Simon,  Jules,  26,  100,  271 
Socrates,  60 
Soumet,  A.,  34 

Spencer,  H.,  12,  16,  81,  104,  251 
Spinoza,  184,  215,  216,  219 
Stapfer,  P.,  72 
Strada,  67,  212,  277 
Strauss,  175,  235,  238 
Sue,  E.,  25,  97,  98,  107 
Sully-Prudhomme,  22,  191 
Swetchine,  Mme.,  53,  201,  204 
Swift,  J.,  102,  230 
Swinburne,  A,  C,  43 

Tacitus,  67 

Taine,  H.,  12,  17,  22,  29,  38,  69,  95, 

97,    108,    146,    147,  162,  163,  164, 

171,  201,  212-23,  244,  245,  250,  255, 

258,  259,  273,  279 
Teba  y  Montijo,  Countess  of,  110 
Tennyson,  A.,  148  (quoted),  281 
Ternaux,  Mortimer-,  95,  118,  273 
Thackeray,  W.  M.,  268 
Thierry,  A.,  164,  233,  264,  269 
Thiers,  A.,  77,  95,  101,  104,  111,  119, 

201,  275 


Thomas,  Saint,  61,  63,  65 
Thomassin,  61 
Tocqueville,  A.  de,  273 
Tournemine,  Father,  102 

Vacherot,  p.,  59,  61,  163,  212,  219 

Vaton,  63 

Vaux,  Clo tilde  de,  170 

Verlaine,  P.,  12,  40,  43 

Veuillot,  Eugene,  19,  22,  45 

Veuillot,  Louis.  17,  26,  31,  33,  34, 
44-9,  51,  52,  53,  54.  55,  56,  61, 
63,  67,  93,  103,  104,  107,  133, 
141,  173,  203,  230,  238 

Vianney,  J.-B.,  29 

Vico,  131 

ViENNET,  J.-P.,  105,  107 

ViGNY,  A.  de,  19,  22.  26,  34,  35,  39, 
41,  64,  68,  90,  118,  121,  123,  124, 
126,  129,  131, 160,  175,  180,  181-91, 
193,  194,-  195,  200,  222,  235,  253, 
256,  258,  259,  278 

Villemain,  1C4,  110 

Villiers  de  I'lsle-Adam,  28,  43,  67 

Vinet,  207 

Vitet,  172 

Viviani,  10 

Volney,  215,  216 

Voltaire,  16,  20,  21,  45,  60,  77,  101-8, 
115,  116,  121,  135,  150,  158,  162, 
163,  208,  259,  264,  270 

Waldeck-Rousseau,  9 
Walpole,  78 
Wesley,  71 
Wilde,  0.,  43 

Ziska,  16 
Zola,  E.,  241 


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